HTC EVO 4G LTE, EVO 3D, and original EVO cameras compared, Part 1
When HTC talks about the new HTC EVO 4G LTE, they talk about how fast the phone runs (very,) how long the battery will last (pretty long, as it turns out,) and how great the camera is. Well, how great is it compared to the previous EVOs? That’s what I am seeking to find out.
A while back, John posted a piece about the gallery that HTC had put up of photos taken with the new HTC EVO 4G LTE. I was not particularly impressed with the pictures at the time, as they were re-sampled sized-down Facebook low resolution photos.
Since getting the EVO 4G LTE, I’ve taken a lot of photos, and although they have been good, most of my photos on any version of the EVO have seemed pretty good.
Today I decided to take a stock, unrooted HTC EVO 4G LTE running the latest OTA, an HTC EVO 3D running MeanROM v18 on ICS, and my HTC EVO 4G running Shifted Sense, and take a few pictures. The phones were set to no flash and highest resolution available to the hardware, and the attempt was made to get the exact same shot with each phone. I would have included the HTC EVO Design 4G and the EVO View 4G, but I don’t have them on hand.
After photos were taken, they were resized in Photoshop (the EVO 4G and EVO 4G LTE have 8MP cameras and needed to be sized down to 5MP), stitched together, and saved in two formats: a compressed format for this post, and an uncompressed format that I link to at the end of this piece.
From left to right, these pictures were taken with the EVO 4G LTE, the EVO 3D, and the EVO 4G (so, newest model to oldest).
In the table shot above, the EVO 4G LTE was clear. Both the 3D and the OG EVO (the original EVO 4G) required multiple takes, as the images would be blurry. The 3D required several takes to get what I wanted; the OG only required two.
You can make out the texture of the floor in the top left only in the EVO 4G LTE photo. The EVO 4G LTE and OG EVO both managed to get objects near and far to look good, although the OG EVO broke down on texture at distance, perhaps because the focus was off. The EVO 3D appeared to have smoothed everything out.
I’d say in order, best to worst, it was the HTC EVO 4G LTE, the HTC EVO 4G, then the HTC EVO 3D.
The EVO 4G LTE and OG EVO both show much more texture than the EVO 3D did; the brightness/range seems to have been sapped a bit from the EVO 3D. I like the OG’s texture a bit more, but feel that in this picture both the EVO 4G LTE and OG EVO tied, with the EVO 3D coming in last.
This one is interesting. I placed each of the EVOs in the same spot. The photos were taken less than a minute apart. They each look as though it is a different bench. None of the photos are the right color; however, the EVO 4G LTE is closest to the right shade. I have no idea what the EVO 3D was doing; the EVO 3D’s texture also fails on close inspection.
The OG EVO 4G wins for texture, the EVO 4G LTE wins for being closest to the right shade/hue, and the EVO 3D lost badly when you zoom in close.
Once again, the EVO 3D has picked a different hue to go with. I’ll point out I am colorblind (red/green), and even I can see that the reds and the greens of the EVO 3D are way off.
For sharpness, it’s the EVO 4G LTE, followed by the EVO 3D, with the last place going to the OG EVO. However, as the EVO 3D didn’t take a picture that properly resembles what it’s supposed to be taking, I’d say that win there doesn’t count for much.
Although not evident in the scaled down photo, the EVO 3D is just a bit fuzzy here on everything, and the colors are off. The EVO 4G LTE is the crispest. My favorite picture though is the OG EVO 4G.
Although this is not quite the same photo, it was taken at the same time on a cloudless day, so the lighting has not changed. I had to check back to make sure I didn’t mix the photos up because the OG EVO 4G blew the other phones out of the water on texture.
The EVO 4G LTE got blinded by the light near the carpet that the other two phones compensated for, and texture was lost. I’m not sure this is a fail, as the position is different, but it did cause the EVO 4G LTE to not win this shootout. The EVO 3D was also dim, muted, meh.
I’ll be doing some low-light photography later and will post a follow up next week on flash, overexposure, etc.
In my book, for daytime shots, the EVO 4G LTE wins, followed by the original EVO. Now, you can change settings to compensate for the problems I encountered, but that’s not what I was going for: I just attempted as close-as-stock as I could get. I’ve also taken photos on the EVO 3D with minor changes to the ISO settings that produced significantly better results than I had today with no changes.
Links: Iron Table (far) | Iron Table (near) | Bench | Chair |Plant | Wine Corner
