This is the HTC One M9, and this is a video dedicated to its camera. If you look at the HTC One M8 with its UltraPixel 4-megapixel sensor and you compare it to this guy and its 20-megapixel sensor, we are probably talking about one of the biggest jumps in megapixels from one generation to the next generation. But has it worked? Is this camera any good? Well, this is the video to find that out. Welcome to the review of the HTC One M9 camera.
When we're talking about megapixels, 20 is actually a pretty large number. The only real other smartphones that have that many are Sony cameras, like the 20.7-megapixel sensor found on their Z3, and Nokia with its 43-megapixel Lumia 1020, but that one's really in a league of its own. So the HTC One M9 is really in the same megapixel range as Sony and their Sony Xperia Z3. In terms of picture quality, has it really changed from the last generation?
The HTC One M8's camera did really well in low light situations, but it had very little detail, it just didn’t look very good, and it lacked 4K video. The HTC One M9's 20-megapixel photo offers a lot of detail. For example, here’s a photo that was just taken out in broad daylight on a pretty clear day. And the photo looks fine. There are a few artifacts, but if you start zooming in, you start picking up things like warm ray and a few artifacts on the photo itself. And it’s not the best photo ever. I’m pretty sure I can take a better photo on an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S6, or really any other recent device, like the LG G3 or the LG G2 — they all produce better photos than the One M9.
The photos look great on the HTC One M9 itself. If you upload to Instagram or any social networks that don’t display full resolution photos, then they does look rather good. But if you blow it up on your computer and you see the full size of the image, you are looking at something that doesn’t look 100 percent great.
Now when you switch to low light photography, we are looking at probably one of the worst performing cameras that I’ve used in quite a long time. With 20 megapixels, we’re talking about a lot of detail, and also the One M8's UltraPixels are bigger than the megapixels found on the One M9's 20-megapixel sensor. And so there's less light coming into the camera with more megapixels, and more megapixels mean more noise. There’s tons of noise found in the ultra low light photos; they’re not that bad, but they’re also not the greatest. Again, the iPhone can probably do better, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and S6 can do better, and the Note 4 can do better. So I’m pretty disappointed with low light in general with the HTC One M9.
4K video is actually a new feature in the HTC One series. Unfortunately, the 4K video is pretty darn terrible. Before I get into this, I want to say I’m sorry to HTC, but I have to be honest here: The 4K video has warm ray everywhere, there are tons of artifacts, and it has no OIS like every other flagship phone. The Galaxy S6 has OIS, Note 4 has OIS, LG G3 has OIS, and all of their 4K video look tons better than the HTC One M9. There are just tons of artifacts, tons of weird things, a lot of warm ray, and it just doesn’t look very pleasing to me.
The last thing to mention here is the front-facing camera. We’re talking about an UltraPixel front-facing camera, and this one I actually liked because low light performance is great, it takes decent selfies, and you can do really good Google Hangout video calls. I took a photo of myself, and while I look a little strange in this one, it turned out to be a very good-looking photo.
One minus on the camera and a double minus on the 4K video: that’s my review on the camera found on the HTC One M9. I was really hoping that the One M9 would have a much better camera than the One M8, but I just can’t say it does. I mean, the One M8 and the One M9 are basically still on the same class of photo quality and ability. There hasn't really been any change, and it’s very disappointing.
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