HTC RE hands-on: WiFi action camera or pointless oddity?

Vincent Nguyen

Of all the things you'd think could save HTC's fortunes, an action camera which looks like a tiny submarine periscope probably isn't the first thing to jump to mind, but the company's hopes are high for the HTC RE. The stubby WiFi-enabled camera borrows ideas both from smartphone photography and more specialist shooters like GoPro, with a 16-megapixel sensor, Full HD video recording, and automatic clip curation using HTC Zoe. Most curious of all, it's not just for HTC's own phones: the RE will work with Android devices and iPhones in general. Read on for some first impressions.

It's certainly distinctive. A curved tube 96.7 mm tall and 26.5 mm in diameter, it's a pocket-friendly 65.5 grams and made of tough plastic. Water and dust proof, too, to IP57, as well as meeting IPx7 for the body and IPx8 if you put on the cap.

The twisted shape fits the hand neatly, with a grip sensor automatically powering the RE on. Controls are limited to a big silver button that falls under your thumb: tap it to snap a photo; hold it down to start recording video.

You don't get any integrated way to accurately frame the shot, since there's no screen or even a viewfinder, but the 146-degree f/2.8 lens means you're more likely than not to capture what you were interested in. A g-sensor automatically figures out which way up you're holding it, and flips the final footage accordingly.

Along with regular stills and 1080/30p video, there's support for 720p 4x slow-motion footage capture, and time-lapse video. Audio capture gets a single HD microphone, and there's a speaker built-in too.

If you want to actually review any of the footage, you'll need to turn to your smartphone or tablet though. There's WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 to send it across to the companion RE app (which can also be used to remotely control the camera, acting as a wireless viewfinder), along with microUSB and a microSD card slot to add up to 128GB of storage (HTC will preload an 8GB card).

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HTC RE hands-on: WiFi action camera or pointless oddity?

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