HTC Rhyme review

Another stylish mid-range offering from HTC…but is it offering anything particularly new?

HTC Rhyme
More or less a purple update of the HTC Desire S

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HTC rhyme review

The HTC Rhyme's 5MP LED flash camera comes with an absolute glut of settings to choose from. From the manual camera-lover's ISO, white balance, contrast and exposure to the more casual scene choices (panorama, close up, lowlight, portrait), to the downright hipster (hello tint effects).

HTC rhyme review

You can tap to auto-focus, post-process with effects and post to your favourite social media networks. Every setting you might ever need is available at a touch on the floating menu bar.

This camera really has it covered.

Which is a shame then, because the images produced won't blow you away. They're pretty good sure, but you can't go that step further… perhaps we're just not great photographers, but we couldn't get a good blurry-depth-of-field shot no matter how we tried. Even in macro mode.

test image 1

Taken indoors in lowlight mode, the image is very crisp for one taken without a flash. The colours are a little washed-out, but all-in-all very little noise for an indoor image.

test image with flash

test image without flash

Taken at night with and without flash in auto. Despite being taken in a well-lit area, the image has far more noise than the previous and is quite grainy in places. There is very little between the images, with the colours more saturated in the flash version and the non-flash image having a softer tone to it overall.

zoomed birds

The full-zoomed image of the two birds is quite sharp, but overall the colour is washed out by the harsh sunlight.

Panorama

Click here for the full-res image

Another mode of shooting includes panorama, which walks you through gently panning across the view and then stitching your shot together. The outcome is great, though it needs to be viewed on a bigger screen than 3.7-inches to get the best effect, as it blurs on the small Rhyme screen.