[One (M8) Original Android Development] CutGlass:
HTC play store app vs Google Camera.

Already the HTC app wins hands down IMO if you take into account that the metering is very much biased towards the square (previously I wrote circle) where you touch. It's also better out of the pocket for a snap. The final text was to be indoor under a mixture of Tungesten, Halogen spots, and those spiral bulbs, which quite frankly it's one of the massive advantages of digital as with the exception of Fuji Reala no film would be able to produce an accurate results no matter how it was scanned or printed without major work. But as it's low light I was expecting a lot of chromatic noise based on my experience of having owned an xperia z2. Of particular interest was also that the HTC app has an anti-camera shake function though it appears to be CPU software post processing rather than a digital camera a moving the lens elements or sensor.

Flash Test.

But the first test is of TTL flash and whether too close is going to give those pale pasty faces reproduced in so many places on the net. To test I used a blue tit's dead bird nest from last year because it was available and on a dark background most TTL systems have a tendency to overexpose the image. This is where the pleasant surprise came in, either the TTL sensor is exceptional or that second lens distance measurement lens is really good at reducing the flash's power I was expecting the black tin to go dark grey and the birds nest (which at these distance with a wide angle lens is proportionally very close) to white out. Both the Google App and the HTC passed with flying colours.

Having the studied the EXIF data that may not be reproduced with the uploaded images, the HTC wins. Both pieces of software do something I am not in agreement with, setting an f2.0 aperture (but for all I know this may be fixed) the google TTL software goes, flash is on must be low light and so sets ISO 2000, the HTC must read the depth data and knew the birds nest was X distance away so set a flash value and ISO value of 125, which means that the HTC is going to reproduce more detailed images. The big surprise is the lack of chromatic noise in the google at ISO 2000 which I attribute to the increased pixel size of the camera.

Ambient Light test.

As mentioned, the camera apps are set to auto white balance. The Google took the image at 1/11th of a second at f2.0 ISO 1600, which is less than the flash (but that will fire at a 1/1000th of a second so is going to give a sharper image). Once again there is an absence of chromatic noise, but the image is smeared. I shot this several times to check and whereas I can handhold an SLR at 1/8th second with a 28mm lens, I could not get a perfectly sharp picture on this. The HTC chose the same 1/10th second shutter speed but it's metering balanced more towards the bird's nest in the corner so at f2.0 it chose an ISO of 1250, not much of a difference. There is certainly less post processing and smearing of the image going on in the crop.

HTC Anti-shake.

I noticed this feature of the HTC app yesterday which is why I reshot tonight as I wanted to check the results. On anti-shake the HTC sets the highest ISO it can (in this case ISO 3200) and yet for some odd reason it chose a shutter speed of 1/10th second again, this should have resulted in a much much lighter image, instead it then must tone back the image down, possibly once it's got a little more light it would continue to set 3200 but speed up the shutter. There's certainly an element of software processing as the camera pauses to process it. The result of Anti-shake IMO is very poor, it would be better to use the standard camera as the image is "smeared" from the high ISO setting and the exposure is not right, in pulling it back down from a brighter image it's gone too far.

Summary

The HTC app beats the google app IMO in every condition. The M8 is particularly impressive in it's lack of chromatic noise which is not visible even at ISO 3200 in these tests (there may be some post removal) but one would get a more marketable image with this 4 megapixel camera at 3200 ISO (even though I don't recommend anti-shake at all) than with a 20 megapixel picture covered in coloured speckles because simply to remove it would smear the image and to not remove it is a risky proposition for a publication as the resizing of the image could end up with visible speckled dots on the page. The HTC app's very biased Partial/ Spot metering is exceptional if you know where to place the focus point (use your imagination and chose something you reckon in black and white would be midtone grey) and out of the pocket it's more accurate in the decisions the software makes. However the gallery app that HTC provides is only suitable if you want to play with filters, google's photo has more options though even better is snapped (another free google app on the play store). The only thing one should really remember with a camera with this few mega pixels is to always fill the frame, but that goes for taking any picture, take a step or two forwards it makes a big difference and with the M8 you can't afford to crop.

I'll load a stock lineage and have a look at the camera app, as I use open_gapps normally it's been replaced, both google and the HTC apps have elements of exposure control but frankly on a phone these are useless, better to use the HTC's metering and accurately place a focus point because an LCD screen is only giving a rough indication of the image and outdoors with a reflective screen you may spend a few minutes playing with the exposure settings but the result is not going to be what you saw on the screen when you pull the image from the memory card (if you can see anything in bright sunlight). A handy tip. If you are taking a picture or a human being or pet, force the flash on, bright sunny days are pretty awful for photos of people/ animals because of the deep shadows, the flash may not be powerful enough to lighten these, but it can put a sparkle in someone's eyes.