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.
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beardybuck - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
I just cannot understand why the Z1 Compact isn't even mentioned in reviews?Okay, I understand that as a US site the penetration of Sony is considerably less than other markets, but as an enthusiast site, it surely merits some reference?
fokka - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
this article, especially the conclusion, sums up my thoughts about the mini 2 nicely. for what you get it's just priced too high and for what it should be, it just makes too many compromises.i would be extremely interested in a smaller flagship phone and think the design of the m7/m8/mini2 is second to none. but the m7 lacks expandable storage (i just ordered a 128gb sandisk...), the m8 is just too big for my taste and needs and the mini 2 has its own set of problems, as we can clearly see.
it's still a very nice phone, but for me it is too compromised (1gb of ram? really??) and much too expensive.
also, with those internals it has no right to be about the same size as the m7, plus htc would have done good if it would have implemented optional capacitive buttons on the black bar, like the 1+1. at least then we would have more available space on-screen.
AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - link
Why the heck did you measure camera shot time, instead of the IOPS transferring then? I mean that's your SSD measurement strategy. Just give a graph of IOPS for each model.Archipelago - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
I too just do not understand the lure of metal and faux metallic cellphones. Quality plastic (such as the Lumias polycarbonite) is cheaper and better and probably tougher.jnkweaver - Sunday, June 1, 2014 - link
How do you do a smartphone review and not even mention call quality? I can find no mention of using it as a phone.RDR99 - Friday, May 15, 2015 - link
I am voting with my feet .. after using HTC since their first smartphone, the HTC Mini 2 really disappointed me and HTC refused to admit that the Mini 2 is totally crippled and underpowered as a phone .. but after trying to use it for over 3 months I had enough .. recently I have delays of 15-20 seconds switching apps .. turning on the phone .. and it keeps freezing .. uninstalled loads of apps .. same result ..So .. HTC Mini 2 is such a bad phone that I just changed to a Sony Z3 compact, after switching to Sony for my Tablet (from a Samsung Note 2 which also was as slow as a crippled dog) and have been incredibly impressed by both products that all I have to say is ... Bye Bye HTC !!