Name: Desire 530
Brand: HTC

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Camera

You'll find an 8MP main camera in the HTC Desire 530. It supports autofocus, has an f/2.4 aperture and also offers HDR.

In perfect conditions I was pleasantly surprised at the shots it managed to capture, but as with everything else it is very slow. The camera app is slow to load, the shutter speed is slow, and it takes a while to process images, especially if you take an HDR shot.

As soon as you try to take a shot in mixed light or low light the quality takes a nosedive. There's lots of noise, the detail is lost and everything turns muddy. I also found the Desire 530 struggled with close-up shots if the subject was very close.

The camera app is straightforward. You can turn the flash and HDR on or off. Your only other options are panorama mode or selfie, which switches you to the 5MP front-facing camera.

There's a handy timer and voice controls, but the quality of the shots the front-facing camera takes is poor. Selfies taken in less than perfect lighting conditions are going to look grainy and dull.

You get built-in photo editing, and HTC's Zoe mode for cobbling together highlight movies. These tools are quite fun – and you'll probably need them to lift your photos – but there's nothing here you can't get by downloading a third-party app.

Video recording is limited to 720p at 30fps, and the results are pretty poor.

The main problem with this camera – especially if HTC is hoping that teens will buy the HTC Desire 530 – is that it's so slow. If you have time then it's capable of decent photos, but capturing spontaneous moments is going to be virtually impossible.

And if selfies are at all important to you, then you also have to consider that the front-facing camera is not up to the task, and its low light performance is awful.