HTC Windows Phone 8X camera hands-on (pictures)

Over the past few weeks, I took several HTC Windows Phone 8X units on a couple of different photo sessions, here in San Francisco as well as in San Diego.

Here, I took a shot of the 8X in Highlighter Yellow with the California Blue version. All photos were taken in automatic mode. Unless otherwise noted, I've also resized them all to fit this slideshow.

A full-resolution shot of the 8X's screen.

Outdoor shots looked great on the screen and off from the HTC Windows Phone 8X, like this Keith Haring statue in downtown San Francisco.

This waterfall at the Yerba Buena gardens looks terrific: you can see droplets and individual ribbons.

The full-resolution sample of the waterfall's stream also looks pretty good to my eyes.

I was much less impressed with the image quality served up on the flowers in CNET's outdoor planter. Though the image focused, the petals look like indistinct blobs of color.

I focused on the scarecrow's face for this photo, taken in the midafternoon light.

The sample taken from the full-resolution image is good enough to be its own photo.

I shot these delicious, tiny cupcakes at Microsoft's official Windows Phone 8 launch event in a room illuminated only with artificial glow. Note that the tiny cupcakes aren't sharply in focus. If a camera made me look like that, I'd be pretty angry, too.

This little pooch sat still just long enough for me to snap this shot. Since dogs are notoriously fidgety (this one was no exception), this shot's clarity is a testament to the 8X's shutter speed.

Just to throw the camera a curve ball, I photographed the menu of this crepe truck.

I must admit that I've never seen a warm, folded crepe stuffed with brownies before. Thankfully this sample of the 8-megapixel image revealed it.

Once again, an outdoor shot of some parked bikes isn't as highly defined as I'd like.

This shot of my name badge is pretty crisp when you consider that the plastic badge holder adds a hazy filter.

This photo of CNET editor Lynn La has the right color balance on her yellow sweater, but her features haven't fully come into focus.

The tiny meeting room didn't have a lot of really visual elements, but it did have plenty of gray surfaces; harsh, artificial lighting; and sodas.

I was pleased with the sharp edges in this study of an orange juice bottle.

The 8X stumbled on this picture of a purse on the floor. Take some of the worst photos, like this, with a grain of salt until we receive a review unit for full testing -- the lighting conditions also trip up much higher-performing digital SLRs.

Even at this smaller image size, your can still detect noise in the gray chair. For reference, the Ray-Ban insignia was my focus point.