The HTC One smartphone is one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the year and although HTC has announced some slight delays for the launch in some regions that doesn’t seem to have dampened consumer enthusiasm for the device. One of the big talking points for the HTC One is its 4-megapixel UltraPixel rear camera and now we have heard that the HTC One that customers will start to receive very shortly will arrive out of the box with a firmware update that has made some significant camera improvements.

HTC has dared to veer from the norm with the camera on the One as other new smartphones are coming out with 13-megapixel cameras now, such as the Samsung Galaxy S4. However we have said many times that megapixels aren’t everything and HTC’s UltraPixel camera is said to harness 300% more light per pixel than other smartphone cameras, which should allow particularly good results in low-light conditions. This is because the pixels are up to three times larger than ‘standard’ megapixels.

Now it appears that two different review samples of the HTC One were supplied to Hardware Zone in Singapore who noticed some significant differences to the photo quality from one unit over the other. The second unit supplied had apparently received a firmware update that had made some improvements to the camera and in the image above you can quite clearly see how much better the image on the right is that was taken with the second unit.

The photos taken with the HTC One that had received the firmware update were all of superior quality and much sharper although the one exception to this was at ISO 800, the reason for which is unknown at the moment. The good news is that HTC has said that the HTC One’s that will shortly be being delivered all across the globe already have the firmware update for a better camera performance.

As a brief reminder of the rest of the camera set-up we can tell you that the HTC One has the 4-megapixel UltraPixel rear camera with autofocus, LED flash, simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, face and smile detection. It also has 1080p video capture @30fps, HDR, stereo sound recording, and video stabilization, all topped off with a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera with HDR and 1080p@30fps.

You can see more of the images at the source link below but please come back to us and let us know what you think of the differences in picture quality? Are you reassured to hear that the final versions of the HTC One that will be shipped already have the improved camera performance enabled by the firmware update? Let us know with your comments.

Source: Hardware Zone