HTC just wrapped up company’s “Double Exposure” event in New York. The company has launched two somewhat odd devices, the Desire Eye smartphone and a RE Camera, at least as hardware goes. The Zoe app was also mentioned, as well as RE Camera’s very own app. HTC addressed its products by posting a new article on their webpage called “Double Exposure – Photography Innovations Designed to Help You Step Out from Behind the Camera”. “Here at HTC, we are committed to designing products that change the way you think about and use technology every day. From the dawn of touchscreen wireless PDAs to the HTC One of today, we have changed the way that you stay in touch with the people, information, and content you care about. Today, we’re doing it again.” says HTC.
It’s not exactly a secret that this event was focused on photography and everything connected to it. HTC Desire Eye was addressed first in the event, so let’s start with that. HTC says that this device is “fully equipped for those who love to take great photos, videos and selfies”. You can check out our main Desire Eye article (linked here) for more details about the device itself (let’s just say the Desire Eye is a rather powerful device), we’ll focus on the camera and software in this article. The Desire Eye comes with two 13-megapixel wide angle lens cameras, one on the front and the other one on the back. It remains to be seen how good these shooters are, but this could be the perfect device for those who love taking selfies. BSI sensors will surely help with the photo quality even in low light though, I’m really interested to see how the device will perform on the image taking front. This handset comes sporting a slew of photography-related software features in order to appeal to consumers. Device’s “Face Tracking” ability makes sure you’re in the frame at all times, which can come in handy while you’re in a video call with someone. This feature can track up to four people by the way.
“Crop-Me-In” feature can crop you from the image or video which are taken with the front-facing camera and position you in the scene which is captured by the main camera. You can do lots of fun stuff with this I guess. “Voice Selfies” lets you trigger the shutter by saying the phrase “say cheese”, or you can say “action” or “rolling” in order to start recording video. There are even some features from the Desire 820 that HTC decided to include here as well, like “Face Fusion Technology” and “Live Makeup”. The former lets you merge 2 faces in order to get something in-between, you’ve probably seen apps that do this already, the latter lets you set the desired level of skin smoothing and preview it in real-time before you capture the image. 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 will all get these features in the coming months, says HTC.
HTC also introduced the RE Camera, a nifty little device which offers a lot actually. This is a handheld camera which features only one shutter button. With one tap you can capture photos while a long press triggers video recording. The camera packs a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor which features full HD 1080p video recording. 146-degree wide-angle lens is also included and you can shoot slow-motion and timelapse videos if you so choose. You can find out more if you visit our original RE Camera article. This device will be available in the US starting in November with other regions to follow, according to HTC. HTC also talks a little bit about its Zoe app by saying “it’s easy to remix your photos and video into stylist highlight reels” by using their new Zoe collaborative video-editing app. Zoe is indeed a nice app and a really powerful one if that’s your thing, it can provide some nice reels. The Zoe (beta) was launched back in August and the app is available now, HTC will even launch it on iTunes soon. The Zoe app is now available on Android devices (4.3+) and as I said it will come to iTunes soon, later this year.
HTC is trying to emphasize the photo and video power of its newest products. The company is emphasizing how easy it is to take images with the HTC Desire Eye and the RE Camera and how easy it is to have fun with those using the Zoe app. HTC mentioned several times during the event how easy it is to perform select operations and use their devices without the need do dig through settings and what not, which is always nice I guess. Anyhow, what do you think of these devices / features? Do you think this is a good move by HTC, do you use / have you used the Zoe app?
