[Galaxy S 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
There are two ways to read this update from the site that originally stated HTC was releasing new camera s/w.

Updated 26/3/13: HTC has clarified that the second unit which we received "has the final commercial firmware, compared to the original unit which was pre-production and had an isolated hardware issue, which resulted in differences between the two sets of photos taken with both devices." According to our understanding, all the commercial sets which will launch in April will come already updated with this firmware. As such, there will be no second camera update for the One, unlike what we previously wrote below.​

The "glass half full" people can read that "launch in April" means devices produced before April have a different version of camera s/w. The "glass half empty" people can read that the first unit in the review was "pre-production" and had unfinished s/w and all production units shipped have the same s/w. That also means production s/w for the One releasing in Singapore in April is the same s/w as that of One's released earlier in other markets. If anyone cares what I think it's that the second One the reviewer tested is the final s/w. The issues he had with the pre-production unit haven't turned up anywhere else and would have if all pre-April One's had that earlier version of s/w.

I think GSMArena would have noticed the difference between these "pre/post update" pics. ;)

Regardless, even with the s/w update, this was the summary in the review. It seems to echo what a lot of other sites have been saying with the first two paragraphs almost mirroring GSMArena's point of view.

Conclusion

HTC deserves recognition for taking a bold, unconventional step towards improving image quality with the 4MP HTC One. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and HTC's implementation of 'ultrapixels' doesn't convey any significant advantage to image quality over the better camera phones of today. There's more to image quality than just the size of a photosite, just as there's more to it than just megapixel count. There's also the matter of optics, and how the image engine processes the images coming out of a sensor.

It's not that the HTC One's camera is entirely bad, if you're using the pictures just for social media, we doubt that most will notice the loss in image detail when viewing on their desktop browser or on another mobile phone. AF is snappy and the shutter is generally fast to respond. But there's also no special need to abandon the 8MP camera phones of today for the 4MP on HTC One. You'd sacrifice image detail for no noticeable improvements in low-light.

There's also the archival question; years from now your 8MP photos will still look decent on a future, more pixel-dense monitor. Your 4MP photo will not. This reviewer still has 3MP photos taken way back when with his first Fujifilm digital camera, and they look woefully small today on his PC monitor. If you print however, the HTC One's largest image resolution, 2688 x 1520 will give you a maximum print size of 8.96 x 5.06 inches at 300ppi, nearly A5 size or somewhere in-between 5R and 6R, which is a decent size.

If you do already have a HTC One and it's shooting images with soft corners, watch out for the camera firmware update which HTC tells us is coming in April for the general public - you'll see a noticeable difference in image quality. With both the previous and new HTC One phones though, we observed the same weirdness happening at ISO 800 - pictures shot at that setting appear softer and noisier, even noisier than ISO 1600.

About the other smartphones - the Nokia 808 Pureview is the undisputed best camera phone you can buy. However, since it's running on Symbian and the auto-focus is decidedly laggy, it's also the camera phone that nobody should buy. Still, it's groundbreaking technology and we're surprised that one year after its announcement, we still haven't seen any other Nokia phone use the same 41MP sensor.

We'd have loved to have the iPhone 5 show up more in the tests, but without a way to control the ISO, we can't conduct a proper 1:1 comparison yet. All we can say is that it looks like the iPhone has the second-best lens in this selection behind only the Nokia 808 PureView, with consistently sharp corner to corner performance. But it does also have a well-documented purple lens flare issue.

So, discounting the iPhone 5, from our small comparison it looks like the Nokia Lumia 920 is the best bang for your buck when it comes to image performance. It's not perfect - images are a little soft - but it delivers the best balance between image detail capture and image noise. It also has optical image stabilization, which is not available on the iPhone (but is available on the HTC One).​

For people interested in the One's camera it's quite an indepth review.

http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/review-htc-ones-camera-tested-updated/conclusion-679