Name: Desire 820
Brand: HTC

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Camera

The cameras packed inside the HTC Desire 820 are a feature that I was really excited to use. A 13MP sensor sits on the back, wrapped in the handset's secondary colour, with an 8MP snapper sat on the front.

It is interesting to see that HTC has taken a departure from its Ultrapixels on the Desire 820. Traditionally this technology has been saved for the HTC One range, so my guess is that it is likely down to the lower price tag.

I'd be lying if I said that of the two I wasn't more interested in playing with the 'selfie' camera, my love of Snapchat and sharing photos through other mediums has fuelled my desire to get a phone with a decent front facing camera. Roll in a massive 8MP and I was immediately intrigued.

HTC Desire 820 review — The HTC camera app is very well designed

Before diving into the quality of the images, it should be noted that the HTC Desire 820 follows on from other HTC counterparts with a really well designed app. It quickly becomes second nature to swipe left or right to change the camera mode from camera, to selfie, and on further to a split capture and photo booth mode.

These modes are pretty self-explanatory, with the first two being very traditional on modern smartphones. Split capture allows you to take a photo of an object, and then a selfie of you in that location, with the photo booth mode allowing you to take a series of four selfie shots that get put together in the same way as a traditional booth.

HTC has also added a variety of different filters that are applied in real time allowing to you apply some basic effects to your images precapture, as well as offering a live make up mode for selfie enthusiasts. In tests I found that this was really frustrating, and is something that I quickly disabled.

Other settings allow you to toggle exposure, white balance and ISO levels too.

With all of the pixels in both sensors, it makes sense to expect a really decent snapping experience. However, in tests I found that the cameras appear to perform below par, with images coming out grainy even in well lit shots. In darker areas, there was also a distinct lack of detail.