RE head mount. The RE comes with a range of different mountsHTC has today launched a new high-powered mid-range smartphone called the Desire EYE and a point-and-shoot camera called RE.
HTC's second tier of smartphones, the Desire range, hasn't necessarily competed well against rival handsets from Motorola or Google. But the desire EYE may just change that, because looking at the specifications and having had a quick play around, it certainly doesn't feel 'cheap'. Indeed, some features on the EYE - like the 13MP front facing camera and dual LED flash - will be to envied by M8 owners.
Whilst the Desire EYE is an impressive piece of kit, of which i'll go into more detail later, the headline is HTC's entrance into the hand-held point-and-shoot camera market. Despite largely accurate rumours, the Re still carried an element of surprise when it was first unveiled to me. It's strange - yet ergonomic - shape and concept as a 'lifestyle' camera and not a 'action camera' like the GoPro will undoubtedly divide opinion.
I got my hands on both devices last week, here's what I found:
RE
Shaped like a comically small periscope, RE is an usual device. HTC was very careful about how it explained who this device is aimed it, desperately avoiding making comparisons to the GoPro - its natural competitor. HTC told me that the RE is a 'lifestyle' camera that's supposed to be both an accompaniment and replacement for your smartphone camera.
The idea is that people who attend concerts, plays or any sort of social event spend the entire time watching it through their viewfinder, and miss out on the action. The RE is supposed to solve this.
I can understand that, if you've ever tried to video something at length it takes the fun out of what it is you're actually filming, not to mention the pain of holding your phone up for the duration. The RE is lightweight, weighing in at 65.5 grams, has no viewfinder and only has two buttons.
But if it has no viewfinder, how do you know what you're shooting? Well it has a 16MP ultra wide-angle 146 degree lens, so it will capture most of what it's pointed at. It supports time-lapse video recording, slow motion and a future update will support live YouTube streaming.
One of the coolest design features is the fact that it has no power button. It turns on simply by picking it up, which activates the grip sensor, so no time is wasted when you need to take a quick photo or video. It's also IPX7 water resistant and supports external memory up to 128GB. On the battery front, it has an 820mAh rechargeable battery, which should take 1200 photos and record 1 hour 40 minutes of continuous 1080p footage.
HTC has designed RE nicely, it's light, fits in your hand (and shirt pocket for hands-free recording) comfortably and is incredibly simple to use. HTC is so uptight about design that I wasn't even allowed to photograph the prototype that I tested out because of some small imperfections that are still being worked on.
It only has two buttons, the slow-mo button and capture button (which needs to be either pressed once or held down for pictures or videos) and it can sync up with any smartphone on any platform. Freeing yourself from viewfinder tunnel vision is something to be excited about, and, you won't have to worry about holding it up at length as there are plenty of body, garment and bike mounts.
The RE is a standalone device. It doesn't require a HTC to work and can connect - via bluetooth and Wi-Fi - to any smartphone on either Android and iOS. Photos can be viewed, edited and transferred wirelessly.
Whilst I think RE is an excellent device, I suspect it will divide consumers. I can see why people would be drawn to purchasing one, whether or not they remember to use it, and take it out with them when they're like to need it, is a different story. Smartphone photography is so popular because people are rarely without their phones, will that also be the case for the RE?
People who use the GoPro, do so for a specific reason. Be it some sort of extreme outdoor activity or just documenting the daily commute. They have a reason to fish it out of their draw, mount it to their bike/bag/helmet and go about their activity. For the RE, however, convincing people that they need to carry around another accessory to record everyday life will be an uphill struggle. Figuring out how to insert a new product into someone's daily routine is a complex riddle few manufacturers solve.
Desire EYE
The Desire EYE is HTC's flagship affordable smartphone. Despite the 'affordable' tag it's actually a fairly powerful device that comfortably mixes with some of the latest high-end handsets.
It features a Qualcomm 801 Snapdragon 2.3GHz quad-core processor, a 1080p screen, 2GB of RAM, LTE connectivity and 16GB of storage with microSD support. Those aren't typically the specs of a device that's supposed to be on the cheaper end of the spectrum.
The standout feature is its camera. Well, both of them to be exact. The rear-facing 13MP wide-angle camera is exactly the same as the front-facing one. Both cameras are 13MP, wide-angle and have a powerful LED flash. Naturally, HTC confirmed that this feature is targeted exclusively at the selfie-obsessed. HTC justified this by telling me that the Twitter hashtag '#me' is, depressingly, the third most used hashtag in the world.
Outside the world of selfies, the powerful front-facing camera does have some genuinely meaningful uses. There's a split capture mode where you can use both cameras simultaneously and take dual footage or pictures. You can also crop yourself into photos that are taken with the rear-facing camera, although when demoed it didn't do a great job of accurately cropping the HTC executive in to the photo and the proportions were slightly off.
One feature I was impressed by was the ability of the camera to detect multiple faces in a video call and separate them out. So if you and a group of friends - in one room - are having a Skype chat with someone else, the Desire EYE will recognise that multiple people are in the room, zoom into their faces, and put each head into a separate box. The person on the other end of the call will just see four separate heads as if it were a conference call. The camera will also follow faces around the room - zooming in and out and measuring depth - to keep focus and ensure you're never out of shot.
You can also share your screen over Skype - or any other video calling software - and transmit a feed of you browsing your phone. All of the new camera features are part of the new HTC EYE software, which will be rolled out to other HTC deivces 'in the coming months'.
To keep costs down, HTC has moved away from an all metal finish. The HTC executive explained to me that the M8 is at the top-end with its all-metal design, whereas the EYE is made out of a single piece of polycarbonate. It doesn't feel cheap, but it doesn't have the same commanding finish that the all-metal M8 does.
It has dual front-facing stereo boom-sound speakers that are surprisingly loud when the volume is whacked up. And there are three microphones dotted around the device to cancel out background noise.
Interestingly, HTC has made the EYE waterproof - a missing feature from the M8 that users commonly complain about - and done so without the port-plugs that the Xperia Z3 or Galaxy S5 have. It has done this by short-protecting the USB and headphone port. I was told that the they didn't want to make the M8 waterproof with clips on plugs because it would've broken the 'design language' of the handset.
The EYE is the complete affordable smartphone that doesn't look or feel 'affordable'. Just as with the M8, HTC has spent time perfecting this handset and it looks like it might replicate the same level of admiration the M8 received from the tech press. How well that translates into sales is a different matter entirely.
Availability
The HTC Desire EYE will be available in the US, Asia and EMEA from late October. The RE will also be available in the US from late October - and other markets in subsequent months.
Jay McGregor is a freelance technology journalist who writes for The Guardian, Forbes, TechRadar and is a tech correspondent for BBC's James Hazel show. Follow on Twitter @_jaymcgregor
Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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