Oh, the relief. For weeks, the online world was hanging in suspense, eagerly awaiting the official announcement of the rumor-shrouded successor to last year’s HTC One, the HTC One. And today, finally, the device was officially unveiled. And lo and behold, it turns out to be just as awesome as predicted. For us photography nuts, the most notable change in the new HTC One are the dual cameras on the back.
The primary camera appears to be the same 4 MP UltraPixel module as in last’s years One, featuring a fast f2 lens with a 28mm-equivalent angle-of-view. The awesomeness however begins when we take a look at the secondary camera–which really isn’t so much a camera. Rather, it’s a depth sensor that records depth information for every photo and embeds it in the picture’s metadata. And what you can do with that is what makes the new HTC One stand out from the crowd.
Thanks to the additional depth information, foreground and background in pictures taken with the new HTC One can be edited separately after capture. For example, the background can be selectively blurred so as to mimick a fast DSLR lens, or foreground and background can be separately overlaid with different filters for cool effects. According to Engadget, HTC will also release a SDK that allows developers to create apps specifically for the dual cameras in the new One. We’re curious to see what they’ll come up with.
Apart from the innovative dual cameras, the new One is a pretty solidly equipped 5″ handset sporting a Full-HD screen, a 2.3 GHz quadcore processor, an Adreno 330 GPU, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal memory (that can now finally be expanded with a microSD card,) and runs on Android 4.4 KitKat overlaid with HTC’s latest Sense 6.0 UI. So if you’re currently looking for a new device, you might want to seriously consider the new HTC One.
