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Available now
9th October 2014
The HTC RE is a novel remote camera accessory that can
connect to a compatible Android or Apple smartphone, and it's one
of those products that is either insanely brilliant or insanely
stupid. It's hard to tell which.
 Before
we try to figure out what the RE is for, perhaps we should
look at what it is. The HTC RE is a periscope-shaped wireless camera
with a 16 megapixel sensor (capable of 1080p video capture) that
interfaces with a smartphone running Android 4.3 or iOS 7 or later
via WiFi. The RE is waterproof out-of-the-box to IP57 standards
or IP58 standards if you add the optional waterproof cap. The RE
stores pictures and movies onto a microSD card, with an 8GB card
supplied as standard, and the integrated 820 mAh battery is quoted
as giving a record time of 1 hour 40 minutes. Which is enough for
a movie.
Picking up the device triggers the RE application on the smartphone,
so you don't really need to touch your smartphone at all. Because
it is smaller and lighter than a phone and can stand up by itself,
then you can use it to take photographs and movies of things that
would be tricky to do with a smartphone.
 HTC
are promoting the concept of the RE with healthy images of people
going outdoors and having fun, and it certainly is a viable alternative
to something like a GoPro for many applications. But it strikes
us that the real value of a device like this is in more furtive
photography of.. well, there's a world of possibilities (not all
of them good).
This is one of those products where consumers will have to decide
whether or not they really want one, or perhaps it is the sort of
cool gadget that people will buy and use a couple of times before
relegating it to a drawer full of smartwatches and NFC tags.
In the UK, EE are quoting the RE at £169.99 (about €215)
and are quoting availability as early November, it will also be
widely available in the US and presumably will appear in many other
markets too.
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