While smartphones’ front-facing cameras have often been outclassed by those on the rear, recent months have seen a change in this trend. The latest smartphone to pack a powerful front camera is the HTC Desire Eye, a 5.2″ model with 13MP cameras on both sides.
Despite the matched resolution, the cameras are not identical. The rear unit has an f/2.0 aperture and a 28mm-equivalent lens; the front is a slower but wider 22mm-equivalent f/2.2 lens.
Cameras are obviously the focus with the Desire Eye, which boasts several other photo-related features. There is an ‘auto-selfie’, which will take a picture automatically once a shot is framed and held steady for a couple of seconds. The cameras can take photos or even video at the same time, which will be stitched together into split-screen content by the new HTC Eye Experience software. Additionally, the image of a person shot using the front camera can be extracted and placed in the rear camera photo. Voice commands (‘Say Cheese’ and ‘Action’) will take a photo or begin to record video.
HTC’s Desire Eye has 1920 x 1080 resolution and runs Android 4.4.4 on a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor (2.3GHz). It has 2GB RAM and 16GB storage (expandable via micro-SD). It will be available worldwide this month, but HTC has not shared a price yet.
