HTC U11 camera test - what good is the UltraPixel 3 camera

HTC U11 camera test

Who wonders what's up with that  1 & 1 blogger battle  who should read this short section before we move on to the actual test. A total of 1 bloggers take part in the 1 & 10 Blogger Battle, battling each other to shoot the best pictures from the categories “Urban”, “People” and “Night”. All participants have about a week to submit a picture from each of the 3 categories, which are then shown on the 1 & 1 Facebook channel be rated by you. The 4 best participants selected by you, as well as a participant selected by street photographer Sebastain Spasic, then have the chance to win one of 3 HTC U11s. There is only one winner per category. Whoever wins will be within the  1 & 1 blogger flat share  decided. Now for the test ...

Hardware

Despite the trend, the HTC U11 does not use a dual-lens main camera, but instead uses a single-lens main camera. The BSI image sensor (backside illumination), with a size of 1 / 2.55 inches, has a native resolution of 12 megapixels and is called "HTC UltraPixel 3". This is probably a further development of the Sony IMX2016, which was released in November 362. The aperture value is f / 1.7. The ISP (Image Sensor Processor) comes from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip and is of the "Qualcomm Spectra 180" type.

Further equipment features are an "UltraSpeed ​​Autofocus", an optical image stabilization (OIS), a dual LED flash, as well as various recording options such as "HDR Boost", panorama, hyperlapse and slow motion. The HTC U11 records videos in maximum 4K resolution. Pictures are taken natively in a 12 megapixel resolution. The recording format for images is either JPG or RAW + JPG.

field test

For about a week I had time to test the main camera of the HTC U11 in everyday life. The respective pictures from the 3 categories were shot in Saarbrücken and at the Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte. Due to the changeable weather of the past days, the camera was able to prove itself in cloudy weather as well as in sunshine.

Let's start with the pictures from the “Urban” category. These pictures were the first ones I took with the HTC U11 camera. The camera app turned out to be easy to understand and provided the appropriate setting options. After a very short time, I was completely familiar with the app. In addition to a normal photo mode for snapshots, the camera app also provides a "Pro mode", which enables user-defined setting options for white balance, light value, exposure, ISO and focus. The selection is made continuously using a slider which, depending on the setting, requires a certain degree of precision. Also integrated is the possibility to post-process pictures directly via the camera app and to artificially beautify them with various filters.

Already after the first recordings, I noticed the extremely fast Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) of the HTC U11. No matter what the conditions, the PDAF focused extremely quickly and accurately. The short release time is also positive. Images are saved in fractions of a second and even with the JPG + RAW recording format active, the delay between triggering and saving is hardly significant.

The pictures taken with the camera of the HTC U11 convince primarily through an excellent level of detail with low image noise. The optical image stabilization in particular helped to take shake-free images even with a restless hand. On the other hand, the color fidelity of the images is less convincing. In strong sunshine and artificial light, the automatic mode of the main camera produces partly too warm and partly very yellowish images. Another criticism is that the automatic mode of the HTC U11 tends to take seriously underexposed photos, which in turn speaks against quick and easy snapshots.

Conclusion

All in all, the main camera of the HTC U11 produces image recordings at flagship level, which score above all with a high level of detail. Unfortunately, snapshots with the camera are more of a matter of luck, as pictures in automatic mode sometimes come out too warm and the exposure is not always matched to the scene. One can only hope that HTC will improve the automatic mode with future updates. Again, the lightning-fast and accurate autofocus, the short shutter release time and the precise optical image stabilization were convincing.