HTC One mini 2 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Joshua Ho on May 26, 2014 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- One mini 2
Lab Scene
As we march towards our outdoor test scenes, we shift to a light controlled lab setup. The setup here is slightly different from what we used in the past two reviews so we re-ran all of the comparison shots. Everything is exposed to the same lighting conditions. We'll start with a well lit test:
At close distance sunder decent lighting conditions the M8 vs. M8 mini test becomes one of white balance and processing differences. You can see a slight resolution advantage here in that the text in the scene is a bit sharper on the M8 mini, but otherwise the differences are in color processing. The light colors in the AMD A4 box (upper right corner of the box) are more pink in the M8 mini's shot, and there's more green in the M8's capture by comparison. Both captures are ok and neither is perfect. In this case I'm far happier with the image from the G2, 5c or Moto X.
Next up is the same scene, but in much lower light (~7 lux):
And this is where the M8's 2.0µm Ultrapixel sensor comes in handy. The mini 2 captures an almost useless image. There's very little detail in the Intel Core i5 box, you can barely read any of the text on the AMD box and there's very little contrast picked up in the ASUS box on the far right. The M8 mini elected to shoot this scene at 1/10s at ISO 2000. The M8 by comparison settled on 1/11s at ISO 1250, and the result is far more legible. The capture isn't as bright as I'd expect, but you can at least get some idea of what's going on here. The 5c delivers a somewhat brighter image, but with more visible noise (1/15s, ISO 2500). The Moto X is pretty bad here. If you're looking at this scaled crop the LG G2 looks like a clear winner. I'd recommend looking at the originals in the gallery below though. In low light scenarios LG triggers some sort of a multi-exposure/pixel binning mode that you can't disable. The result is great low light performance, but at the expense of sharpness - the full image is a lot more blurry on the G2. When scaled down to lower resolutions it's less of a problem, which is why it looks reasonable here.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
76 Comments
View All Comments
Laxaa - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
It baffles me that this "mini" is the same size as the M7. What does this offer that the M7 don't have on a lower price point?fokka - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
slightly better battery life, slightly better camera in daylight, sd slot.Morawka - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
i like last year's metal unibody much better than this. Satin aluminum feels much better in the hand, (and looks better) than this brushed aluminum look.krazyfrog - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
The brushed aluminum finish is only on the grey model. The silver and gold look like the M7.fokka - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
i also like the m7 design better, but not because of the brushed finish - i love brushed metal! - but the corners look better imho. it doesn't look all that rounded, more simple and also the top speaker grille is more centered. also the speaker grilles were real metal on the m7 and if you look closely at the m8 you can see that theres a rather thick clear coat on the grilles, plus not all holes are drilled all the way through. "nitpicking", yes, but on a phone that lives for its design i think those are still valid points.also the second (duo-) camera looks goofy and the black m7 is just absolutely gorgeous, compared to the black m8 with its appalling gold speaker grilles (sprint version).
also (sorry for saying "also" so much!), i don't get how they get their numbers like "90% metal", or "50% metal". shure, the surface of the m8 features a couple percent more metal than the m7, but not to the extent of 90% vs. 70%. and the mini 2 sure as hell isn't down to only 50%. i'm really wondering how they calculate this to get those numbers.
SetiroN - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
You are being WAY too kind.These "mini" marketing devices deserve to be bashed and put to shame. People buy them thinking they're getting a mini flagship and end up hating android.
This is a terrible device at that price point.
Laxaa - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
It is. The M7 is a much better buy. It might be a year old, but it's still a great smartphone. It looks better as well.hangfirew8 - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - link
Exactly what I was thinking! If they had put an 8MP camera on the M7 it would have been a better phone than this.fokka - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
the m7 with a larger 8mp sensor with OIS and an sd slot would have been perfect!! plus the sd801 from the m8 to seal the deal and they would have one customer more.r3loaded - Monday, May 26, 2014 - link
4.5 inches is "mini" now?