HTC Launches A Selfie Phone And Action Cam

At a press event yesterday afternoon in New York City,HTC  launched two new devices: a selfie-friendly smartphone with a high resolution front-facing camera and an action cam designed for one-handed operation.

The HTC Desire Eye sports a 5.2-inch screen, Snapdragon 800 processor and 2400mAh battery. The phone’s unique feature though is that the front-facing camera delivers 13MP images and offers a dual tone flash, the same specs found on the rear camera. In all other respects, the Desire Eye falls in between the company’s flagship One M8 and the midrange Desire 816. Touting the Desire Eye as a phone well-suited for selfies, HTC VP Jonah Becker listed new software features that include an auto timer mode, voice-activated shutter, and the ability to allow simultaneous video capture from both front and rear cameras. Face tracking in the front camera allows the subject to remain in focus while moving around the frame, and there’s the option to share your screen view during a video chat, letting you show off images in your photo library during the chat, for example. The Desire Eye will be sold in the US by AT&T T +0.8%, with the carrier to announce pricing and availability in the coming weeks.

These software enhancements will also be made available to current owners of HTC One M7, M8 and Desire 816 phones.

Key phone specs:

• 13MP front camera with F2.2 22mm equivalent lens, dual LED flash
• 13MP rear camera with F2.0 28mm equivalent lens, dual LED flash
• 5.2-inch screen, 1920 x 1080 resolution
• Qualcomm QCOM +2.29% Snapdragon 801 processor
• 16Gb storage, 2GB RAM, micro SD slot
• 2400mAh Li-ion battery

The HTC RE captures 1080 video and 16MP still images. While it’s unique shape is designed for one-handed operation, several mounts will be available for the camera as well.

The other hardware announced is the HTC RE, periscope-shaped action cam that captures 16MP still images and 1080 video. Clearly aiming at the market led by GoPro, the RE actually seems to draw from the once-popular Flip camera whose simplicity of use targeted camera novices. The waterproof RE is designed to be held in one hand, has no power button (it turns on when you pick it up) and has a single large button to capture images or start/stop video recording. The RE uses a lens with a 146 degree field of view, a necessity since there’s no viewfinder to check your composition. Users can record slow motion video at 120fps at 720 resolution in addition to time-lapse videos. An HTC app will let users control the RE remotely from both Android and iOS devices as well as transfer images and video. The RE will be available in the US at $199, “in time for the holidays,” according to new HTC America President Jason Mackenzie.

HTC also announced that their Zoe content sharing app has moved out of Beta and is available in Google's GOOGL +1.63% Play store. An iOS version is going to be released as well, “later this year,” says HTC’s Drew Bramford, VP of Creative Labs. The biggest new feature is the ability to allow friends to make further edits to content you’ve posted.

A 13MP front-facing camera is a novel move. Most phones offer 5MP resolution and the Oppo N1 managed its 13MP front camera trick by using a swiveling lens that you had to manually reposition. The question of course, is if consumers really have “take better selfies” on their want list when shopping for a phone.

While HTC has garnered critical praise for flagship smartphones like the One M8, customers have been slow to abandon high-end phones from market leaders Apple AAPL +2.08% and Samsung. HTC is in the midst of a three-year decline in revenue, with low-cost phones from Chinese manufacturers stalling growth among the company’s more moderately priced phones. Today’s product launch comes only a day after former HTC executive Mike Woodward confirmed to Bloomberg he had left the struggling phone maker and is now working in a senior position in mobile services at Amazon.

By launching an action camera, HTC joins a number of competitors all trying to replicate the success of GoPro, which has sold about 8.5 million go-anywhere video cameras. None have come close, however, and there’s little in HTC’s recent track record to suggest it will fare any better. An HTC executive confirmed in an interview with Re/code that the company had originally planned to launch a wearable gadget at this event, but says, “It ended up just not being ready.” On a more positive note, HTC is widely rumored to be the manufacturer of Google’s upcoming Nexus 9 tablet, which will likely be one of the first devices running the new Android L OS.