Review: HTC ONE X Camera (Video)

Here is the 2nd part of HTC ONE X review. Click here to check out my first part of the review. As mentioned, I will focus on the camera of HTC ONE X in this part of the review. One of the features of HTC ONE X is the camera. It is touted to have the shortest lag. Read on to find out good the camera is.

Camera lag

The HTC ONE X has a 8-Megapixels rear camera with F2.0 aperture. It can capture images in low light and has a dedicated image chip. I guess that is the reason for the fast reaction from this camera.

HTC ONE X has the shortest camera lag of all the mobile phones that I have seen. In fact, it is so fast that it makes it so surreal. Press the shutter and the picture is taken before you know it.

HTC has made it simple to use the camera. It has inserted the camera icon into the menu so that you can access the camera in any screen (see below).

Built-in Filters and Adjustments

HTC has also add in many filters for the camera. And you can actually see the effect “live”. They are: Distortion, Vignette, Depth of Field, Dots, Mono, Country, Vintage, Vintage Warm, Vintage Cold, Grayscale, Sepia, Negative, Solarize, Posterize and Aqua.

Here are the results of some of the effects.

Distortion

Dots

Vignette

Vintage Cold

And there are also many adjustments that you can play with.

Continuous Shooting

This is one of the very impressive features on HTC ONE X. Pressing on the shutter will allow it to shoot continuously. Here are some settings for Continuous shooting.

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And here is a screen shot after the shoot.

You can choose the best shots and discard the rest or just leave this menu to get all the shots (I managed to get the shots as I set the phone to automatically upload the pictures to Dropbox).  In my opinion, this will be an important feature for sports event.

Camera Mode

HTC ONE X has a number of camera modes that you can set. They are: Auto, HDR, Panorama, Portrait, Group Portrait, Landscape, Whiteboard, Close up and Low light. As for video, it has a Slow motion mode (not sure how many times slower).

Most of them are not new. What is interesting is the HDR mode. Below is a sample of using HDR mode (I don’t think it did any justice to it). I think it takes 2 shots and combine them to make the best of it (in terms of lightings).

Another function is the Panorama mode. It will take 5 pictures. All you have to do is to press the shutter once, follow the box. Once you are in the box, it will automatically snap a picture and continue for the rest. Once done, it will process these pictures to have a panorama view.

One of the disappointment of HTC ONE X camera is the Close up or Macro mode. The focusing distance is not near. I have seen better macro on other mobile phones. For me, this is very important if I am going to take a small object as I will not be able to get closer to it due to the focusing distance.

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Summary

Overall, I love the speed of the camera, the continuous shooting mode and the Panorama mode. The color from the pictures is always very subjective. It depends on individual. I would only comment that what you see on the screen may NOT be what you will see on your computer. For example, a shot that I have taken seems more saturated on the HTC ONE X than on my computer screen.

HTC is NOT the only one with such “problem”. I have actually seen a handful of manufacturers’ mobile phone with similar “issue” recently. So, if you need a fast camera to take candid pictures, HTC ONE X is definitely one of the mobile phones on the market that you can consider.

Here is a short video I made about the HTC ONE X camera.


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