[One (M9) General] hamdir:
my interest is currently focused on the HTC camera app and these tweaks, tested in low light on pure 2.10 base

persist.camera.qcwnr.enabled=0

This is essential if we want any control over the way the M9 deals with noise, if we don't use this line denoise will remain the same and the persist.denoise.process.plates below will not have any effect, this is the line with the most clear change, once we use it, HTC's famous smudging will disappear and will get much more detailed images instead at the cost of apparent color and luma noise especially in low light

camera.eis.enable=0

Well this will disable HTC's weird EIS effect and instead we will have motion blur, without OIS the M9 is very weak in getting stable shots in low light, so either way it's a loss, disabling EIS however can be beneficial for shots with better light

persist.camera.snap.format=1

This has little effect unless we disable HTC's denoise using persist.camera.qcwnr.enabled=0, once we do persist.camera.snap.format=1 will cause a clear change, however the results of the value 1 and disabled HTC smudging are terrible, it creates extreme color noise even in medium light plus unstable pixel patterns, we should not use this line, it also cause color damage to the thumbnails

persist.denoise.process.plates=0

once we disable HTC denoise using persist.camera.qcwnr.enabled=0, these controls will work but the change is minimal, naturally 0 or 1 are the better values since they prioritize quality but they do at the cost of speed which the M9 already suffers from in low light (the image will take a longer while to be saved in gallery), so i suggest going to 0 or 1 only if we are using locking at least ISO400 and not 200 (to keep the shutter a little faster), 0 seems to use Android's built-in general quality denoise, while 1 will only deal with the color components without touching the grey scale image more here, result is that you will have higher amount of dark noise but will look slightly more detailed, you can really use any of the values to your preference (quality vs speed, full denoise vs color denoise) but keep in mind Android's built-in denoise is not that great either, in extreme low light we will still see terrible color noise due to the tiny pixel nature of our sensor (which explains why HTC went so insane with their own smudging)

in fact the denoise plates are actually exaggerating the fine nature of the tiny pixel noise! does anyone know how to disable them completely?

currently this combo works:

persist.camera.qcwnr.enabled=0

camera.eis.enable=0

# persist.camera.snap.format=1 (not using this line)

persist.denoise.process.plates=0

but it still doesn't match Freedcam's pre 5.1 denoise disable (which gave us pure noise from the sensor like RAW), we need a way to disable both HTC denoise and the plates together if we want match that

finally we should remember both ISO and Sharpness settings have direct effect into the pixel quality as well, since the sharpness code also have some denoise of it's own and naturally the higher ISO the more noise, anything higher than 400 becomes crazy in noise, thankfully the M9 sensor is low ISO friendly (i mean you can take bright low light images even with ISO400)

my current settings are middle ground:

- Sharpness -1

- Max ISO400

essentially my recommendation is this:

DO NOT add the line persist.camera.snap.format=1 or persist.camera.snap.format=0

we end with something similar or even better than the OP2 auto mode

color noise is evident the higher the ISO (at 1600 it becomes extreme) but around ISO200/400 we will get great image with faint apparent noise, which is much better than HTC's default smudge fest

samples and comparison photos here

I still think [MENTION=5487411]Almalence[/MENTION] post process tech like the OP2 clear image is lot more beneficial than all this non sense:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=63176700&postcount=30248