One thing was obvious at the launch of HTC's 'One' handset with its 'ultrapixel' camera - there was a certain amount of misdirection going on. Marketing talk about 'the largest sensor ever put into a phone' and 'gathers 300% more light' was misguided at best. While I commend HTC for concentrating on a lower megapixel count and higher quality, the sensor in the HTC One is exactly the same physical size as that in just about every other top end phone, including the Nokia Lumia 920. The addition of Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) was interesting though, again matching the 920, which is why I wanted to link over to some head to head photos taken down in Australia by the Neowin crew.

Here's the set-up:

At the HTC One launch, it was clear that HTC had put a lot of effort into the camera assembly of the HTC One, including the use of larger pixels to capture "up to 300%" more light than competing smartphones, and optical image stabilization similar to the Lumia 920. Now I was carrying my Lumia 920 to the event in Sydney, and couldn't resist testing the camera out against the HTC One.

The following shots were taken in similar conditions with both cameras: the Nokia Lumia 920 was using default settings and no flash, and the same for the HTC One except Zoe functionality was also disabled so both phones were taking only still shots. The Lumia 920 is the top photograph from each of the few samples below, while the HTC One is on the bottom.

And here's the most telling of the three examples:

The HTC One camera does indeed do better than any Android-powered phone we've seen before (the Samsung Galaxy Camera is an edge case), and credit to HTC for that, but Nokia's imaging team has far more experience of producing high quality optics and sensors and even this 'PureView v2' camera in the 920, limited for space as it is, produces significantly better results.

The other examples are here at Neowin. 

PS. The (Symbian) Nokia 808 fan in me can't help but note that this still beats everything in the Windows Phone, iOS and Android world hands down for still imaging. Will we see something announced this week at Mobile World Congress that can think about rivalling the Nokia 808? Let's hope that this is the year of a really great camera phone from.... somebody. Having 2013 end with a Symbian device still ruling this particular space would be embarrassing for many!