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.

Main camera in automatic mode delivers good colours but on closer inspection does produce some noise, while the sky is blown out.

In HDR mode colours are more vibrant  and the sky is fixed now, which is exactly what a good HDR mode should do.

In low light, the camera is slow into action and struggles to stay in focus

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.