Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

HTC Desire 816 Review - Camera Review

The camera set-up is pretty much identical to the One Mini 2 with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front facing camera, both of which are capable of filming in Full 1080p HD.

It also uses the same camera app, with an interface that can be fiddly to switch between modes when you are trying to take a picture. This also means, that another new HTC handset misses out on the Duo Camera technology featured on the M8, but as you’ll see from our One M8 review, it’s far from a perfect feature on HTC’s flagship phone anyway.

So the decision to go for more megapixels instead of larger ones is not necessarily a bad move and in the right conditions you can capture reasonably sharp, colourful images. Unsurprisingly, it’s on par with the One Mini 2’s camera in most departments, particularly in HDR mode and in Macro performance where it excels.

While low-light performance on the One Mini 2 particularly stood out, the Desire 816 finds it more of a struggle with the focus and sensor slow into action, which often leaves images overexposed.

It’s a similar story with the front-facing camera, where selfies are generally accurate but lack a little vibrancy,

The main video camera, meanwhile, is not the best performer, producing quite juddery, blurry footage. Audio capture is reasonably decent, but on the whole it’s a little underwhelming.

Desire 816 photo samples 2Soccer players training in a large empty stadium.
Main camera in automatic mode delivers good colours but on closer inspection does produce some noise, while the sky is blown out.

Desire 816 photo samples 1Wide-angle view of a soccer stadium from the stands
In HDR mode colours are more vibrant  and the sky is fixed now, which is exactly what a good HDR mode should do.

Desire 816 photo samples 3Night shot of foliage with flash by camera under review.
In low light, the camera is slow into action and struggles to stay in focus


Desire 816 photo samples 4Two men in suits posing for a photo outdoors.
Colours in this photo are generally good and accurate, but it could be sharper and the camera doesn’t deal well with the bright ambient light in the background.

We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.

Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.

Used as our main phone for the review period

Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

author icon

Editorial independence

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

author icon

Professional conduct

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Trusted Reviews Logo

Sign up to our newsletter

Get the best of Trusted Reviews delivered right to your inbox.

This is a test error message with some extra words