So the iPhone 5 is now available to the masses and while every tech site compares the phone to the other big boys (Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X) I figured it would be cool to compare it to my new phone, the HTC One S. I’ll get into more detail between the two phones in another post but for now I’ll compare the camera and video capabilities of each.
All of these were taken right at my computer desk so nothing super technical about them and all pictures were taken with the stock default settings; open the camera app from the lock screen and shoot a picture, leaving the camera to auto focus on its own. NOTE: the iPhone 5 takes pictures in 4:3 aspect ratio so the HTC One S was changed from its default 16:9 to 4:3 to match.
HTC One S Front Camera
iPhone 5 Front Camera
HTC One S Front Camera 2
iPhone 5 Front Camera 2
The front VGA resolution camera on the HTC One S much darker and much lower resolution then the iPhone 5’s improved 720p camera. I’ll have to test using them in actual video calls over 3G/4G and WIFI to see how much of the quality is sent to the other participant in the call.
HTC One S Camera
iPhone 5 Camera
HTC One S Camera HDR
iPhone 5 Camera HDR
All of these pictures were taken with the flash off. It’s hard to tell the difference between the regular pictures, at least to me since I’m no photographer, but the HDR pictures show the HTC One S brighten up the scene to the point where colors look washed out. One interesting thing about the iPhone 5 I found is turning on HDR disables the flash. Doing the same on the HTC One S, you can still use the flash.
And here’s video of each phone shooting at 1080p. The iPhone 5 stayed focused throughout from what I could tell while the HTC One S refocused a couple of times, most likely due to the lower amount of light. One weird thing is you can hear the clicking of the HTC One S auto focusing. The video makes it seem much louder than it actually is but the HTC One S can record stereo audio while the iPhone 5 is stuck in mono. Why does a phone with 3 microphones NOT record in stereo?
Later in the week I’ll put up some more comparisons so stay tuned!
