The brand new HTC One (M8) is without question the best Android phone on the planet right now. I’m not sure there’s even a close second. I explained why in my HTC One (M8) review last week, but it boils down to the combination of HTC’s fantastic design, premium materials, remarkable attention to detail, powerful components and great new Sense 6 software. Nothing is perfect, however, and I found that the quality of photos captured by the new Duo Camera on the M8 is the worst thing about the new M8. Is the new One’s camera really as bad as I said it is, though?
On Tuesday afternoon, I began taking test photos with my HTC One (M8) review unit and my iPhone 5s to prepare for an in-depth camera comparison. While the M8’s in-built effects and other camera enhancements definitely outshine the iPhone’s comparatively bare bones camera, I have found that there is a huge gap in photo quality.
Here is an example of the sample photo pairs I was taking, which shows an obvious and significant discrepancy in color reproduction, contrast and clarity (photos are unedited but location information has been stripped from the EXIF data — click for full size):
iPhone 5s
HTC One (M8)
When I got back to my desk to begin looking through the photos and preparing my post, however, I saw that iMore’s Allyson Kazmucha had already published a massive camera shootout that was so thorough, there really wasn’t a need for me to do one.
Kazmucha pitted the HTC One (M8) against the iPhone 5s in a number of different lighting scenarios and the results in some cases are pretty surprising. I won’t mention any spoilers, though I will note that some of her results are pretty shocking — even to me.
The full camera comparison can be seen by following the link below in our source section.
