HTC Re Camera

I just got through watching the HTC event ‘Double Exposure’ and was quite surprised.  It started at about 1:00 PST and lasted about an hour.  looking at the name of the event, you could probably conclude that this was going to be a “camera” related event. Some people speculated that it would introduce the new “selfie” phones.  If you were one of those speculators, well… you were correct.  kindof…

They did introduce the HTC One M8 Eye and Desire Eye (phones) and have a 13 mp camera in the rear and front facing camera.  They also introduced new “Eye Experience” software suite.  TechCrunch.com described it pretty well in their article:

HTC is debuting its new “Eye experience” camera software suite. The new camera software has an auto selfie feature, which automatically takes the photo once the phone has been held steady for a couple seconds, and voice commands including “Say Cheese” and “Action” will snap a photo or start recording video automatically.

You can also use the new double camera feature to shoot both front and back images at the same time, and compose them into a single image by placing them side-by-side. You can also intelligently crop out the image from the front-facing self camera, taking only the picture of you, and overlay it on the image from the back.

New face-tracking tech also keeps the camera while you’re video chatting, and can track up to four faces at once. What’s ironic is that while this was being announced, HTC was actually live-streaming its event with what seemed like handheld DSLR cameras, which resulted in a generally pretty nauseating effect.

The real reason I was surprised is that they introduces a new camera they are calling the HTC ‘Re.’

The specs are pretty cool and the functionality seems even cooler:

• Camera:     16MP CMOS sensor
• Video:     1080p, 30fps FHD video recording
• Lens:     146° ultra-wide angle lens (f2.8)
• Grip Sensor:     Built-in instant-on grip detection
• Waterproof:     IPX7 (waterproof cap enhances to IPX8)
• Battery:     820 mAh
• Wireless:     BLE, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) with Wi-Fi direct, microUSB

It can stream to the internet (YouTube partnership), to your smart device (android or ios), you can control it with your phone, it is waterproof, you can activate slow mo recording from the device and will work with the current mounts that are in the marketplace already.

They have a site up where you can pre-order the device and said they will ship in time for Christmas (http://www.recamera.com/us/).  At a $199 price tag, I  can see this giving the GoPro a run for the their money as the holidays approach.