HTC will return to the land of the dual-camera smartphones in 2018

The attention might have been on the squeezable U11 Plus during its launch event in Taipei, but shortly after its unveiling, HTC confirmed that a dual-camera smartphone is currently in the works.

The confirmation came from HTCpresident Chialin Chang, who was expectedly coy regarding further details about the smartphone. The executive did insinuate that HTCwill find a way to make the dual camera system stand out from the crowd:

We’ll definitely be releasing a dual-camera phone next year, but we’ll need to figure out how to make this feature stand out.

HTC fans will remember that the company first dabbled in the world of dual-camera smartphones with 2011’s Evo 3D. The phone tried, and failed in many regards, to capture the 3D craze at the time with a dual-camera system that took 3D pictures. The Evo 3D’s display was designed in a way that allowed images to be displayed in 3D, but the phone was not much of a success.

It would be another three years until we would see the One M8, which also featured a dual-camera system but one that eschewed gimmicky 3D features for a focus on bokeh effects. 2015’s One M9 Plus also featured HTC’s Duo Camera system, but the company decided to focus on just one main camera in following smartphones.

Things have changed drastically since then, however, with dual-camera systems becoming more commonplace on flagship and budget smartphones alike. The iPhone 7 Plus certainly helped popularize the trend, with the G6, V30, Galaxy Note 8, and many more having also featured their own twists on how a dual-camera system should behave.

As such, it is too early to determine what dual-camera setup HTC’s mystery smartphone will feature, though the company will likely pull some software tricks to augment the hardware.