Selfies are the in thing for 2014 and both Nokia and HTC have released phones in the past year with increasingly more capable front-facing cameras to cater to the selfie-loving crowd. Today HTC has announced the Desire Eye, a surprisingly mid-range phone that the company says will be the selfie phone king. It has broken the tradition of having the best camera at the back of the phone, if has the same camera back and front at 13 megapixles. This makes it the highest resolution front-facing camera to date — and features autofocus, a dual LED flash on both the front and back of the phone, and 1080p video recording.
The HTC Desire Eye specs
- A 5.2-inch, 1080p display that looks great and has wide viewing angles.
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor
- 2GB of RAM as HTC’s flagship One M8. I
- IPX7 water resistant, so it can be dunked under a meter of water for up to 30 minutes without any problem.
- Two color options — a white and red and a two-tone blue — are fun and attractive.
- Android 4.4 KitKat with HTC’s Sense 6.0 interface
HTC has included a number of new features to its camera app to take advantage of the 13 MP Eye’s front camera. And they call it the Eye experience , will come to the HTC One (M7), HTC One (M8), HTC One E8, HTC One mini, HTC One mini 2, HTC One max, HTC Desire 816, HTC Desire 820, and HTC Butterfly 2 in the coming months, as well.)
The HTC RE Camera is cool, but the $199 price may have many thinking twice
The idea behind a handheld, standalone camera isn’t exactly new. I can remember sporting a Flip camera back in the day, a (relatively) affordable, easy-to-use digital video camera. It was quickly killed off as smartphone cameras took over.
And the idea of the auxiliary camera, tied to a smartphone, has been done before. In 2013, Sony rolled out its quite-good QX line in Berlin in 2013. And today we have the new RE camera from HTC — a small, sleek, nicely designed periscope looking handheld camera. It’s $199 retail, and will be available in the U.S. in the coming weeks, with other markets to follow.
The HTC RE Camera Specs
- 1-inch piece of PVC pipe
- 4 inches or so long, takes a 90-degree turn
- A few pinholes for speakers, microphones and LEDs.
- microSD card slot support
- 16-megapixel Sony DSC sensor
- The RE app will be available for Android 4.3 and up, and on iOS 7 and iOS 8
- HTC also revealed a line of add-ons for the RE camera, including clips, mounts, suction cups and charging accessories
