Name: One S
Brand: HTC

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Camera and Video

Camera

You can tell HTC has decided it really needs to concentrate on its camera efforts. A recent study showed that the camera is the main selling point now for people when they buy a mobile and HTC must have figured this out.

It's been offering up decent cameras for a while now (though we do wince to remember the truly awful snappers on the likes of the HTC Magic!) but HTC has obviously decided to keep on ploughing ahead.

The HTC One S comes with a powerful 8MP snapper on board. It's a real belter here and we'd say it definitely gives the Samsung Galaxy S2 a run for its money.

HTC has made a real point of stressing how quickly it can take photos and we can verify this is not all marketing speak. You can fire this phone up from standby and have a photograph snapped in less than two seconds.

And that includes going through the unlock procedure. It really is amazing. There is a downside in that it obviously doesn't have time to automatically focus so quickly but you can do this manually by tapping on the screen. For very quick, spontaneous pics, it'll serve you well - and even if you do want to get a bit focussy, the speed with which clarity is achieved is impressive.

Whatsmore, when you take the photo, there's no fancy animation of the photo slipping into the gallery before you take another picture business. It is ready to go immediately. If you're somebody who takes photos in quick bursts, this really is a phone for you.

The only thing we're sad to see missing is a dedicated camera shutter button which would have been the icing on the cake.

The HTC One S also has a very nifty, and very bright, LED flash. We found it achieved some pretty cool results when we used it in low light conditions...even if it did make everyone in sight squint.

HTC has given us a ton of cool filters and these – plus the treasure trove of settings – are all available easily enough from the shooter screen.

We're not talking the basic ones you get on every phone but never use but some really impressive Instagram-esque effects that you can apply whilst taking the photo – things like Vignette, Depth of Field and Vintage.

Unfortunately, there's no ability to apply these same effects after you've taken the photo so, for example, we couldn't apply a tilt-shift to a picture which is a bit limiting.

You do get other features that you can add for post production but they're nowhere near as exciting, although you can download the likes of Instagram to help that out.

If you indulge in this as well, you'll be able to do some serious fun damage to your snaps.

Uploading is very well integrated, as you'll get a massive list of options to get things out there into the big wide web... and if you install the likes of Twidroyd or Instagram.

There's also the front camera – that snaps at VGA resolution. But unless you're particularly vain, we can't see that being a problem.