HTC Desire Eye has 13MP selfie camera, S801 chipset

There was a lot of speculation what the Eye will be, well it turns out it's the new Desire flagship. The HTC Desire Eye can be seen as an upgrade over the HTC One (E8) as it takes the 13MP camera with dual-LED flash from the back and brings it around the front too.

That give the Desire Eye a unique face – a much larger than usual front-facing camera is positioned above the screen and it gets a dedicated dual-LED flash and a microphone. It's getting the same treatment as the back camera, which has a dual-LED flash and a microphone too. There's another microphone on the bottom of the device for a total of three mics used for better audio through noise cancellation.

HTC Desire Eye in Blue

Both cameras can record 1080p@30fps video. The one on the back has an f/2.0 aperture and a 28mm lens, while the one on the front has a wider 20mm lens but a smaller f/2.2 aperture.

HTC's trademark BoomSound speakers are harder to see but still on board. They flank the larger 5.2" screen of the HTC Desire Eye, an LCD with 1080p resolution. Besides selfie camera and screen size, the Eye also trumps the One (E8) with an IPX7 rating – water resistance up to 1m of water for half an hour.

The Desire Eye carries much better specs than most of the Desire family. It's powered by a Snapdragon 801 chipset with 2GB RAM and runs Android 4.4 with the latest Sense software and two camera-centric apps – Eye Experience and the new Zoe.

HTC Desire Eye in Red

Anyway, the phone also boasts LTE connectivity, dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX, NFC and a microUSB port. The port is left uncovered while maintaining the IPX7 rating, just like the HTC Butterfly 2.

The Desire Eye has 16GB of built-in storage, expandable by microSD cards (up to 128GB) and a 2,400mAh Li-Po battery. With front-facing stereo speakers, a large front-facing camera and a larger screen, the Eye is not the most compact device around, measuring 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5 mm.

The HTC Desire EYE will be offered by AT&T exclusively at launch. Further availability and pricing details will be available later on.

The HTC Eye Experience app will help you use the two 13MP cameras to the fullest. Split Capture divides the photo 50/50 between front and back cameras, while Crop-Me-In creates a single photo with you photoshopped into the back camera image.

The impressive front-facing camera on the Desire Eye also targets high-quality video calls. To make things easier it can track up to four faces and keep them in place so people can relax and not worry about positioning while they chat. This even works with third-party video call apps like Skype.

HTC EYE Experience will roll out to the following models (full feature list to be confirmed at roll-out): HTC One (M7), HTC One (M8), HTC One (E8), HTC One mini, HTC One mini 2, HTC One Remix, HTC One Max, HTC Desire 612, and HTC Desire 816 in the coming months.

Then there's the new Zoe. Recent HTC phones came with just a promise for a new app for months on end but the wait is over. The new version offers collaborative video editing and it integrates with RE – HTC's new action camera. Zoe is not completely done even after all this wait, the new content engine will launch later this year.

HTC Zoe app will be available for all Android devices

Zoe is not just for HTC phones – not even just for Android. HTC will release Zoe apps to the general Android population and even iOS later this year.

iOS too