There do seem to be some tweaks compared to the M7’s camera software (above and beyond mitigation for the missing OIS), for example color accuracy is improved on the M8. HTC continues to do an excellent job with the software tuning of its camera. You can also use HTC’s Gallery to quickly select and delete all photos. HTC offers a best shot button that will analyze all 99 frames, determine the best one and delete the rest. Burst capture is supported, just hold down the capture button and the One will grab a maximum of 99 frames at a rate of around 12 fps. There’s virtually no capture lag as images are dumped directly from a capture buffer to NAND. In lower light the preview will drop frames as it attempts to maintain visual accuracy.Ī full pass of the autofocus routine should take around 300ms. With enough light, the preview appears to be full res, accurate and at a high frame rate. The camera UI has been substantially improved (not that it was bad to begin with).

It’s unclear just how different the underlying ISP architecture is in Snapdragon 801, however it is considerably faster (930MP/s vs. HTC maintains the dual-ISP approach with both its own Imagechip and Qualcomm’s integrated ISP working to process sensor data. HTC is quick to point out that although the camera sensor and lens system haven’t changed since last year’s model, they are backed by an improved Qualcomm ISP (Snapdragon 801 vs.

The impact on still photography is also significant, although it’s easier to mitigate through tuning of the camera software. The lack of OIS has a tremendous impact on image stability while recording a video: I carried both versions of the One (M7 and M8) and recorded some video while walking around RDU. I’m curious as to whether or not we’ll see it return in a future flagship, but for now the feature is gone. HTC’s OIS was never quite as good as Nokia for example, and there’s surely an impact on yield. Dropping OIS was likely due to a combination of cost and performance concerns. The entire module is almost identical to what we saw last year in the M7, with one notable exception: it no longer has OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). Due to quality control problems with the ST sensor the M8, like later models of the M7, uses the OmniVision sensor exclusively. As Brian (correctly) theorized last year, there were two sources for HTC’s UltraPixel camera: ST (VD68969) and OmniVision (OV4688), the latter being the limited second source.

The M8’s primary shooter is a 4MP “UltraPixel” camera with 2.0µm square pixels. As I mentioned earlier, the One’s primary camera sensor remains unchanged from last year’s model.

Download ultrapixel camera