HTC promises to improve cameraphones

HTC has admitted that the cameras on its range of smartphones haven't been as good as they could be but has vowed to put that right.

Speaking to TechRadar, Eric Lin of HTC said the company has plans in place to take on the bigger names in the cameraphone market.

"We've devoted a lot more work to camera performance as we know it's something people want from us; they don't want to wait 10 seconds for the camera to load up."

No more business

Given the mobile phone has assumed central importance to users' lives fewer people are using two separate devices, Lin told TechRadar. So where HTC was once seen as catering for the business user, the company has had to make its devices more consumer friendly.

"There's no such thing as a business phone any more, users don't want one phone for one part of your life and one for another."

Megapixel wars

However Lin did say that it was unlikely to be entering the 'megapixel wars' dominating the phone market at the moment, with the likes of Sony Ericsson releasing a 12MP handset in the last week.

"Whether we do something like that is dependant on how confident we were that we could handle [phones using high megapixel sensors] and whether consumers actually start demanding it.

"We've seen plenty of research that says 5-6MP is the sweet spot for a camera phone, so would it make more sense to put a bad-ass 5MP sensor in one of our phones?

"But if carriers and consumers say they want more megapixels, then that's something we may have to do."

HTC's recent offerings include a 5MP camera on the Touch Diamond 2, although this comes without flash, so expect a slew of more snap-happy handsets in the coming year.