Much to my surprise, HTC rolled out the new EYE update within 24 hours of announcing it, even here in the Middle East. I downloaded it instantly and gave it a whirl. And a few things have changed.
Camera modes
The first big changes come in the native camera modes. HTC has recognized the importance (albeit the annoyance) of selfies and has replaced its Dual Capture feature to a more interesting Split Capture. This allows for equal framing from both cameras, plus you needn’t take both pictures together. They claim it let’s one show off the reaction to what they’re looking at and share that with friends. As you can see in the image below, my reaction to a chair, a clock and a wall is fairly apt.
The Photo Booth feature works pretty much like its namesake in the real world, allowing you to take 4 selfies in quick succession. You have the option to take these in a wide grid, a square grid (for Instagram) or as a straight filmstrip, in portrait or landscape.
Camera Options
Packed with the new EY update are a little bunch of camera settings which you can manipulate – safe to say, they’re pretty much built for the selfie fanatic, but can be used otherwise as well.
Auto Smile Capture does exactly what it should – with weird results sometimes, especially when you try and take a group photo. But it’s a cute addition to the options. Voice Capture is interesting, because it recognizes hot words like “Say Cheese” or “Capture” or “Record” to activate a command. It comes in handy when you’re trying to take a selfie with the rear camera, although it somehow managed to eliminate the shutter sound every time I tried it – which meant I never really knew if the selfie was taken or not. Probably something they can fix with the next update.
Touch to Capture allows you to not let your finger search for that sneaky camera button, but instead touch anywhere on the screen to capture.
Face Fusion
I’ve kept my favorite new feature for the end. The EYE update brings with it a nifty little post-capture feature called Face Fusion, which I know will take up hours of my time. Here’s how it works – take two pictures, keep one as the base, and fuse the face from the other picture into the base photo. This can then be saved as a new picture, or as a transformation video. But I’ve had the most fun just playing with the settings. I took pictures of both my daughters, then fused the face of the younger one on to the face of the older one. The fact that they already look somewhat similar added an interesting face morph effect.
If you own an HTC One M8, the roll-out has begun and there’s no point in waiting. The EYE update will come out-of-the-box for the upcoming HTC Desire EYE, and according to early news, there will also be a roll-out for the HTC One E8 and the HTC One M7 in the coming months.
