HTCs Cameras… are they that good?

A while back, I believe Tom had posed the question to everyone… is your phone replacing your camera?

I know the polls had said that most of you were still using a decent camera for your photography, same here, but I’ve found less and less that I use my ‘camera’ camera, and use my phone.  Only in special occasions do I break out the camera bag and tripod.  For the most part it’s ‘snapshots’.  [I remember our “Circles of Confusion” photography club used to have huge arguments about the nomenclature use of the term ‘photography’ and ‘taking photos’]

Well, HTC has been touting its own horn with the release of these new One series phones with the excellent camera in them (I’ve yet to try one out, HTC hasn’t returned any of my calls for a demo unit, and I haven’t found time to go and pull the pin on my update).  Even though, their first release of their shots weren’t really met with any great applaud (not many were that impressed by these shots).

Then there’s even the new commercials that they’re showing off with a photography student:

So they’re really playing it up.  They’ve even released a ‘challenge’ for you to see if you can tell the difference between the camera-phone, and the camera shots.

http://blog.htc.com/best-camera-phone/

Give it a shot and see how you do (it’s not so obvious, even with you trying to side with them – I got 5/10!).

But is this marketing working?  Are they really as good?  What’s your thought?