HTC is announcing the Desire Eye; a mid-range
phone that the company says will be the selfie phone to rule them all. It will
be available from AT&T later this year at a price that's yet to be
determined. Where all other smartphones have their best cameras on the back of
the phone, the Desire Eye has the same camera on the front as it does on the
back. It's a 13-megapixel camera — the highest resolution front-facing camera
to date — and features autofocus, a dual LED flash on both the front and back
of the phone, and 1080p video recording. On paper, it's the most capable
smartphone for selfies we've ever seen. But the Desire Eye's charms don't end
with selfies: it's actually a rather impressive smartphone in its own right.
The thing about the Desire Eye is that it's
just not that mid-range of a smartphone. It has a 5.2-inch, 1080p display that
looks great and has wide viewing angles. It has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon
801 processor paired with 2GB of RAM as HTC's flagship One M8. Its soft-touch
plastic finish isn't as premium as the all-metal chassis' of the M8 or iPhone
6, but it still feels great and is actually easier to hold on to than the more
slippery metal phones. It's IPX7 water resistant, so it can be dunked under a
meter of water for up to 30 minutes without issue. Its two color options — a
white and red and a two-tone blue — are fun and attractive. All of those
features are what you might expect from another maker's high-end smartphone,
but the Desire Eye sits below HTC's best products in its lineup. While we don't
yet know what the price will be when it hits stores in a couple of months, it's
likely that it will cost less than the M8 and other high-end Android phones you
can buy.
But the Eye was built for taking
selfies, so it doesn't have the M8's Duo Camera features or Ultrapixel camera
sensor on its back. Its 13-megapixel camera is fairly run of the mill — it's
the same camera used on HTC's E8 and very similar to the cameras on many other
Android smartphones you can get today. In our brief time with the phone, we
noted that it took acceptable images in daylight and outdoor conditions, but
couldn't hold a candle to the market leaders in low-light environments. We'll
reserve final judgement on its performance until we have time to perform proper
review.
Of course,
no other smartphone has the same spec camera on its front as it does on the
rear, and the Desire Eye makes its stated purpose very obvious when you first
see it. The large camera is mounted dead center at the top of the phone, like
an Eye of Sauron staring at you as you hold the phone. HTC has added a number
of new features to its camera app to take advantage of the Eye's front camera.
There's a mode to take a picture with both the front and rear cameras at the
same time, a la FrontBack, and an ultra-gimmicky mode that lets you insert
yourself into a scene using both cameras. You can also merge your face with
another person's face to create a mutant selfie. There is a new face-tracking
feature for video calls that zooms in and crops the image to a caller's visage
and can support up to four different people in the same room. You can also take
selfies or record video with your voice, and a new automatic mode will snap a
selfie once the phone is held still and your face is in the right place. (HTC
says all of these camera features, called the "Eye Experience", will
come to the HTC One (M7), HTC One (M8), HTC One E8, HTC One mini, HTC One mini
2, HTC One max, HTC Desire 816, HTC Desire 820, and HTC Butterfly 2 in the
coming months, as well.)
For the
rest of the Eye's software, it's pretty much the same experience as the M8: it
runs Android 4.4 KitKat with HTC's Sense 6.0 interface. The Eye's fast
processor and lots of RAM ensures that it performs just as quickly as the M8,
as well.
I tested
taking selfies with the Desire Eye in a number of environments, ranging from
bright outdoor conditions to dimly lit indoor environments. Despite all of the
high-end specs packed into the Eye's front camera, it unfortunately didn't do
remarkably better than the iPhone 6 when it came to taking selfies. Outdoor
images looked good, with plenty of detail and great colors, but as soon as the
light levels dropped, images became dark, soft, noisy, and just plain terrible.
Contrasted with the images from the iPhone 6's front camera, which were grainy
and noisy, but much brighter and sharper, the Eye just wasn't that impressive.
We'll be putting the Eye through a proper review process once it's available
for purchase, and HTC tells me that it's still adjusting and fine-tuning the
software processing ahead of the phone's launch.
It's not clear exactly how HTC plans to
position the Desire Eye in its portfolio: it's a better phone on paper than the
Desire 820, but it's not up to the flagship level of HTC's One line. HTC says
it will be priced higher than the 820, but it was hesitant to call the Eye the flagship
of its mid-range Desire lineup. Either way, if you're looking for a good
smartphone at a price less than most high-end phones sell for, the Desire Eye
is an interesting proposition. Even with that giant camera staring at you all
of the time.