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The HTC One X has a 8 MP BSI (back side illuminated) sensor that includes a F2.0 aperture and a 28mm lens. The rear camera supports Full HD 1080p video recording. The front facing camera has a resolution of 1.3 MP and supports 720p video.
With the One series of phones HTC has a dedicated image processor marketed as ImageSense. This allows for some pretty neat things such as zero shutter lag, image capture while recording video and a burst capture mode.
Starting with the camera application the first thing you will notice is that there are quick buttons for image and video capture – no need to play around with slide buttons here. The polaroid stack of pictures below links to the gallery.
The blue circle includes Instagram-like filters as well as distortion and vignette effects among others. These do prevent the burst mode from being used but it’s a fair tradeoff. Combined with the gallery image editor the One X’s software is a certain Instagram killer. Personally, I’m not into overly modified pictures of the world around us in the first place.
Sadly the zoom is not adjustable by the volume rocker. The A on the right stands for auto and it changes depending on the selected image camera scene. Other scenes include HDR, panorama, portrait, landscape, whiteboard, close up and low light. Each has their own uses; whether you want to take a family photo or capture notes off a whiteboard.
There is also a toggle mode to switch between flash, auto flash and no flash.
The cog represents the settings area and here is where you are able to switch between which camera to use. Further settings include self-timer, image adjustments and auto upload. From the latter you can set it so pictures automatically upload for Facebook or Flickr.
You have the option to enable 4:3 widescreen images within here. By default it is in widescreen mode. Even though the image resolution states 8 MP when in widescreen mode, it actually decreases the vertical field of view and takes 6 MP images.
Picture and Video Samples – be sure to click on the samples for the full sized samples
Standard Samples:
Panorama Sample
No matter what we found there to be some degree of visible image stitching in our panorama samples. However it does offer acceptable image quality for roughly 9100 by 1600 images.
HDR On and Off:
Enabling HDR brightens the foreground and tones down the definition of the clouds in the background. We found that it worked well, except it did take a few seconds to process each image.
Burst Sample:
The number of burst shots can be limited to 20 shots or unlimited. We found this unlimited mode to be capped at about 100 shots but it also appeared to depend on the phone’s ability to save them all to memory. In burst mode 3-4 images are taken each second.
Sample while recording video:
You can also take pictures while recording 1080p video, however these images are limited to 6 MP (3264 x 1840). As a bonus pictures taken while recording video appear to match those taken separately.
Video Samples:
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO6QukJGoHY'] [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaY7bqZp5nw']Video quality didn’t amaze us, nor did it disappoint us. It does appear to have some kind of issue getting a true focus while panning, though the samples did turn out alright. Wind noise was a bit of an issue when wind was virtually non-existent. Sadly, there is a two second delay before hitting record and 1080p video being recorded, this issue was significantly reduced when recording in 720p.
Video image stabilisation doesn’t appear to do much in reality – if you want decent image stabilisation then we advise you to rely on Youtube or other third party programs.
The focal length of the sensor is pretty long at roughly 3 inches so true macro shots are terribly out of focus. We also found it to be heavily influenced by different light scenarios, making us think that a backside illuminated sensor is not always better. Overall we found the camera to be impressive – helped by the bonuses added by ImageSense such as zero shutter lag and burst capture mode. It will easily take very capable shots in most situations and is a good alternative to cheap point and shoots and even bulky DSLRs for holidays.
