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,

 

Video Comparisons Part 1

If you read my blog in the past, I have a standard def camcorder, the Samsung SC-MX20. I said I like it. Well, no more. It sux! I tried using it during an event where things can get fairly dark, and it failed big time. It just sux, no way around it. Not only that, the recorded video has incorrect aspect ratio and interlaced, adding processing time. Super annoying! Thus, my search for another camcorder, preferably an HD one.

Lurking around, I came by a Sanyo VPC-FH1A. Now, Sanyo is not the first brand I would think of for camcorders. It would be Canon, Sony, or Panasonic. However, camcorders from the later manufactures are expensive. In the meantime, the VPC-FH1A is 1080p capable with a fairly good-sized sensor (even larger than more expensive Sony/Canon models), and I found it for only $330. A lot, if not most, consumer HD camcorder only records 1080i. Yeah, interlaced video, which means your video when viewed on your computer will have lines and jaggies, and it takes a considerable amount of time to de-interlace it. And no, I found out most models, even expensive ones, can only record in 1080i. No option to do 720p. On the other hand, pocket camcorders from Flip/Kodak can record in 720p, but obviously those have small sensors and no optical zoom. The Sanyo VPC-FH1A is a rare breed. It is a standard handheld camcorder form factor, and can record in various resolutions, including 1080p and 720p. It even supports iFrame, an off-standard resolution set by Apple, 960×540 progressive. Personally, I don’t really care for 1080p, all I want is progressive recording, so the iFrame and 720p format suit me perfectly.

Now, you may say what’s the point of iFrame if you have 720p. It’s only a bit higher than standard DVD 480p resolution. Well, try editing a 720p video. I have an iMac with Core 2 Duo processor, and iMovie 09 still choked on scrubbing the 720p movies. In comparison, iFrame videos scrubs very smoothly. Another point is bitrate. The FH1A records 720p video with 9Mbps bitrate, while iFrame has a whooping 24Mbps bitrate! That means less potential of artifacts due to over compression/not enough bitrate. To me, iFrame is an advantage and a great feature.

HD camcorder aside, I also realize I have a lot of gadgets that can actually record video. From a 5G iPod nano, iPhone 3GS, various digicams, and to the Sanyo FH1A. This made me want to do a comparison of videos recorded with those devices, and I did. 🙂
The devices and the video resolutions they record in are:
-iPod nano 5G (640×480, progressive)
-iPhone 3GS (640×480, progressive)
-Panasonic DMC-TZ4 digicam (848×480, progressive)
-Casio EX-FC100 digicam (720p)
-Canon S90 digicam (640×480, progressive)
-Samsung SC-MX20 camcorder (480i)
-Sanyo VPC-FH1A camcorder (1: iFrame 960×540, 2: 720p)
*Note: to enjoy the videos fully, watch them on Youtube in 720p.

Part 1:

Part 1 is focusing on the details on the building during daylight.
-iPod nano 5G: It does okay for a tiny camera in an iPod nano. However, obviously it’s too tiny to capture much light. The video is pretty dark with oversaturated colors.
-iPhone 3GS: The 3GS actually did very well. It seems to adjust the contrast better on dark areas unlike the 5G nano. The resulting video is a lot brighter and captures more details. It is very nice for a phone. In fact, I like the 3GS video better than the one from the Samsung MX20.
-Panasonic TZ4: The main advantage of the TZ4 is that it records the video in widescreen resolution. This gives you the nice impression of more details. The video itself is very sharp, but actually has quite a lot of artifacts, probably due to the limited bandwidth the camera is recording. The artifacts are more pronounced during movements.
-Casio FC100: Oh, welcome to the HD world, or at least 720p. The increased resolution is prominent, allowing you to observe more fine details of the buildings. Good sharp video, but artifacts are aplenty, probably due to over compression and/or lack of bandwidth.
-Canon S90: Ouch, return to the standard def world. The S90 is a great picture taking camera, but video recording is only at VGA resolution. However, you can notice that its sensor can capture more light. The dark areas pretty much lighted up on the S90. Also notice the much wider angle lens compared to any of the other devices. You could see the top of the building with the S90!
-Samsung MX20: Now do you notice how sucky this camcorder is? Not only I have to de-interlace and correct the aspect ratio before hand, but you see that the colors are just bad and inaccurate. Video is fairly dark and doesn’t have much fine details. Oh well, it is cheap, but obviously you can get better video with a digicam.
-Sanyo FH1A iFrame: Very nice and smooth looking video, although it feels a bit soft.
-Sanyo FH1A 720p: Wow! After looking at the 720p video, I feel I cannot go back to anything lower. The details captured is just amazing. I mean I can see lines on the building’s walls that I don’t see on the previous videos. Just amazing!

Well, this is the first part. I’ll continue my commentary more later with the rest of the videos. You can watch all the videos on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/pata2009
Oh, yeah, as much as I hate Google/Youtube, it gives me the best feature for 720p video streaming.

 

Panorama test

Playing around in making a panorama photo. I took the pictures with my iPhone.
For the first one, I used the iPhone app called AutoStitch. It’s a very straight forward app for the iPhone is creating panorama pictures, quite handy on the go. Although you can only see a low-res version of the resulting picture on the iPhone, syncing back with iPhoto gave me the full res picture.

Not bad for something that is done on a phone. There are obvious flaws, but again, considering you can do this just within the iPhone itself is pretty neat!

Next I used PhotoStitch, a software from Canon (it’s in the CD included with my S90) using the same pictures taken with my iPhone.

It’s a mixed bag. The sky on this one has an obvious seam from the stitching, but there are less blurring on the deck’s hand rail.

Lastly, I used my Canon S90, and stitch the picture using Canon’s PhotoStitch.

Obviously since the Canon can capture better pictures, it looks better.

Making panoramic pictures seems fun. If you have an iPhone, there are quite a few apps for this. 🙂