HTC One Photo Comparisons #HTCOne

Yes, I obtained myself the HTC One. It is my second HTC phone, the first being the Nexus One. I don’t usually like HTC as in the US, they don’t sell their phones unlocked (Nexus One being the exception, sold by Google). However, looks like HTC is changing their ways, by offering their latest flagship, the HTC One, unlocked, straight from their own website. And unlike Apple that delayed their unlocked iPhone availability in the US to push people buying from the carriers, HTC is making the One available pretty much at the same time as the carriers. This is quite unprecedented, as most phone OEMs are only selling their handsets locked with the carriers in the US. HTC finally joins Apple, Sony, and Google, in selling unlocked handsets.

Aside from being unlocked, one of the most talked about feature of the HTC One is its camera, namely that it’s just a paltry 4MP. Considering how other phones are pushing 8 to 13MP cameras, it’s actually refreshing seeing HTC taking a different path. Despite being 4MP, the One’s camera has a much larger sensor than most phones, 1/3″. That is nothing in the world of digital camera, but in phones, it’s quite “big.” Having a bigger sensor means more light exposure on each pixel, thus better low light sensitivity. Of course, lay consumers will balk at four megapixel, so HTC is branding it as “UltraPixel.” In most HTC One’s marketing material, you won’t see 4MP being mentioned anywhere.

Why the gear switch from the megapixel war? Consider the most common usage of smartphone cameras. Most of the time, they are used in low-light situations (indoor social events, parties, etc), the worst situation for a camera with such tiny sensor and cheap optics. Also, most of the pictures are posted online, in social networks, where they are resized to less than 4MP at best, with most are around or less than XGA resolution. Not many people are going to print the picture taken by their 13MP smartphone camera into a poster. HTC recognize this, thus the focus on low-light capability by sacrificing the resolution.

I’m going to do a completely unscientific comparison between the HTC One camera and carious other devices.

First contender is the iPhone 4. People now talk about 8 to 13MP camera and laugh at HTC One’s 4MP, yet just a few years back, everybody was praising Apple iPhone 4’s 5MP camera. The iPhone 4 is still available for sale from Apple. Second is the Nexus 4, the reference Android handset from Google. It didn’t receive good reviews for its 8MP camera, but for $349, you get a 16GB unlocked stock Android phone running the latest OS. Not too shabby for the price. I also include a cheap Samsung flip-style camcorder that I bought from Costco a while back for $100, the Samsung HMX-W200. It is designed to be a flip-style camcorder, but has picture taking mode at 5.5MP. And finally, I also use the Canon S90, a compact camera that propelled the enthusiast high-end compact category. It’s old, uses an old CCD sensor compared the latest CMOS ones in the S100/S110, but it’s still a good size sensor for a compact, 1/1.7″ at 10MP.

First test is indoor, with some natural light going in. All pictures are straight JPEG from the devices, resized with iPhoto. No other post processing done. Now, count up your sins! 😀

The iPhone 4 picture is not bad, but it’s fairly noisy as the camera is trying to compensate the low light condition.

The Nexus 4 picture is darker. Noise is okay, better than the iPhone 4.

The HTC One did pretty good. Noise is well controlled and the picture is pretty bright.

The cheap Samsung camcorder just cannot match the rest of the candidates.

The Canon S90 came out on top, as expected, although the picture is a bit soft.

Well, we can already see the advantage of the HTC One,

 

T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G Quick Impression

I stopped by a T-Mobile store yesterday to play with the HTC myTouch 3G. HTC myTouch 3G is the US version of HTC magic, HTC’s 2nd gen Android smartphone.

The phone itself feels fairly compact, not as bulky as I thought. Definitely not as bulky as the G1 because the myTouch 3G doesn’t have a physical keyboard. If you’re coming from a non-touch-screen dumb-phone/S60/Windows Mobile, you’ll be amazed by the UI. It uses capacitive touch screen, like the iPhone, thus offers more responsiveness than the likes of resistive touch screens that are commonplace in S60 and Windows Mobile phones. Touch is quite responsive. Having a good touch interface really change the way you interact with the phone. A lot of things become more natural than pressing buttons.

Google maps is awesome. The myTouch 3G has a built-in A-GPS and digital compass. Paired those with Google maps’ street view, and you have a completely new experience. The digital compass will keep track on where you’re facing automatically. All the other apps are standard fare. The music player is just a basic player. The camera doesn’t seem to be that great, but it might be simply because I’m playing with a demo unit.

Like I said, if you’re coming from a non-touch screen phones, or smartphones that are designed to use stylus/using resistive touch screen (S60, Winmo), Android’s UI is surreal. Considering that this is just version 1.5 of the OS, it’s quite an amazing accomplishment. Now, note that I didn’t mention the iPhone.

I don’t have the iPhone, but I’ve been using the iPod Touch since the 1st gen. Let’s face it, Apple nailed the iPhone OS’ UI pretty good. Although the myTouch 3G uses capacitive touch screen, I find the responsiveness to be slightly below my iPod Touch. This is very prevalent when typing on the virtual keyboard. Although the myTouch 3G has auto-correction, which helps a lot, I find myself mistyping letter far too often compared when I’m typing on my iPod Touch. Then there’s multi-touch, which is non-existent on the myTouch 3G. Multi-touch makes the iPhone’s touch UI to feel very natural, like pinching in/out to zoom in/out. I find that the lack of multi-touch makes the Google maps and internet browser apps on the myTouch 3G to be less intuitive. Then there’s the menu button on the myTouch 3G. Really, why do I have to go away from a big touch-screen to press a small button on the bottom to pop up a menu? It detracts me from the whole touch experience. Not cool.
A side note, as far as UI responsivess on a capacitive touch screen, imo the ZuneHD is even better than the iPod Touch, thanks to its nVidia Tegra processor.

So, there’s my quick impression on the myTouch 3G. It has a much better user experience compared to the plethora of dumb-phones/resistive touch smartphones. However, Apple really set the bar pretty high. Good thing is, Android is open source, and you can see how quick it’s improving going from 1.0 to 1.5. With more and more phones coming out using Android, we will see more and more interesting features. Motorola already announced its Android phone, the Cliq, which is focused on social networking. HTC Hero, HTC’s 3rd gen Android phone, will have multi-touch. Once the OS reached 2.0, we may see Sony Ericsson’s xPeria X3 using Android.

At this point in time, a regular consumer will have a better user experience on the iPhone. As far as subsidized price, it’s the same price as the iPhone. iPhone has more memory, but myTouch 3G has microSD slot. The downside of the iPhone in the US is that it’s locked with AT&T, and T-Mobile provides better value in the monthly bill. I do hope, and rooting for Android to be as good, if not better as a platform.