HTC wants you to know it doesn't matter how many megapixels your camera has, as long as it has UltraPixels like the new HTC One smartphone.
This perspective stands in stark contrast to the "more is better" megapixel mentality that's led to high-end phones with at least 8 -- and as many as 42 -- megapixel cameras. HTC is taking a more sensible route with its new flagship Android phone, which sports a deceivingly low 4MP camera called the HTC Zoe Camera with UltraPixels.
HTC says Zoe has a sensor that offers fewer, larger pixels -- "UltraPixels" -- that capture more light than conventional smartphone cameras. Less is more, it argues, if you want better on-the-go pictures.
“What we realized is that megapixels is just a metric for blue shirts in Best Buy. It makes it easy for those guys to sell a camera,” Symon Whitehorn, HTC’s director of special projects, told Wired. “Not that megapixels are bad, they’re good in the right context.”
The HTC One camera has a fairly standard 1/3-inch BSI CMOS sensor. What sets it apart is, due to having less pixels, it can have 2.0 micron sized pixels -- an equivalent size to enthusiast compact cameras and significantly larger than the 1.4 micron pixels in 8-megapixel cameras like you see in the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III.
The so-called UltraPixels can capture around 200 percent more light. Compared to 13MP smartphone cameras with 1.1 micron pixels, the 2.0 micron pixel captures 300 percent more light, according to HTC.
You could put 2.0 micron pixels in an 8MP and 13MP sensor, but that would mean amping up lens size and adding bulk -- as you can see in some of Nokia’s smartphones. And while smaller pixels can capture a good amount of light, it comes at the cost of increased noise (or graininess) in your photos, especially in low-light situations.
“Light is basically a bunch of photons in wave form. The bigger your pixel is, the more of that you can capture,” Whitehorn explains. “If you think of it as a bucket, it’s going to take in more rainwater than a tiny cup. You can put a lot of little cups to try and collect the same amount of light in the same space. What happens is you have equal amount of light, but also you have the space in between the cups, which is called the noise.”
To let in even more light, the HTC One's camera has an f/2.0 aperture, the largest of any current Android smartphone. It supports ISO from 100 to 1600. It’s on par with Nokia’s Lumia 920 Windows Phone, which has been praised for its camera. A large aperture means the HTC One perform well in low-light and allows a faster shutter speed.
We took the HTC One out to a dimly-lit restaurant and it produced far better, and cleaner, images that the Samsung Galaxy SIII we had with us. The HTC One’s photos were much clearer, and you could plainly see everyone in them. Photos snapped with the Galaxy's 8MP camera didn't look any sharper than the One's 4MP images. The only advantage to the Samsung's snapshots was you could zoom in tighter on a subject’s dark face.
Thanks to the UltraPixels, HTC’s latest image processing chip -- officially called the ImageChip 2 -- doesn’t expend much effort eliminating noise. Photos are naturally much cleaner, so HTC has allocated that processing power to a couple of new features.
The most exciting is “Zoe” mode (from which the camera gets its name). Zoe lets you take full-resolution videos while simultaneously taking full-resolution still photos in burst mode. Shoot a video and the camera is taking photos for you.
“We invented a way of dual-path encoding where we would shoot still and video simultaneously with no data loss,” Whitehorn says. “We wouldn’t drop data yield down at all. We would bring in full-resolution video and full-resolution stills at the same time... What that means is you have this living asset, that moment will be alive -- you can always scrub that moment and get that perfect smile.”
This is by far the most useful addition to a smartphone camera. You can return to a video and literally scroll through the images, select one and save it to your camera roll or share it. Instead of pulling a low-res screenshot, you can pull a full-res photo of the exact moment you want.
Another neat feature: Zoe mode starts recording video before you even press the record button so you don’t miss a moment. “Think of it as TiVoing your life,” Whitehorn says. It's constantly recording and dumping video when in preview mode, and as soon as you hit record, it remembers the last few seconds of recording it just did and saves it with your video.
Other cool features abound. Video also can be shot in an “always on” HDR mode at full 1080p resolution or in slow motion. The camera uses continuous auto-focus for still images. And the HTC One has a dedicated imaging gyroscope, making it possible to have built-in optical image stabilization -- like in the Nokia Lumia 920. Unlike digital stabilization, the lens itself moves as much as one degree in any direction to address phone shaking or motion.
The front-facing 2.1 MP camera has a wide angle lens -- first seen in the HTC 8X -- with HDR capability.
Once you’re done snapping photos, "Living Gallery" provides a new way to browse through them. Instead of disorganized thumbnails, Living Gallery organizes them into events if you don't feel like accessing them in tile view. Photos and videos from each event are assembled into a 30-second video snippets with filters, music and slick cuts. You can customize by selecting specific images and shots you want to include, but otherwise there’s no work involved.
“Everything we’ve tried to do is try to get a natural response and capture with true fidelity the world as you see it,” Whitehorn said. He admits that reducing megapixels is a “risky thing to do in marketing terms,” but says that in the end it’s the best choice for how people actually use their smartphone cameras.
It’s certainly true that megapixel count has become a lauded spec -- the higher the number, the better the sell. But contrary to what the “blue shirts” might want you to think, more megapixels in your smartphone camera won’t help you take better, share-worthy photos of your cappuccinos and kids. In fact, higher megapixel counts could actually hurt the quality of your photos.
The HTC Zoe Camera in the HTC One is the first smartphone camera to toss aside the megapixel myth and create something that could actually change the direction of smartphone shooting. Considering the smartphone camera has quickly become many people’s only, go-to camera, it’s a bold and smart move.
