HDR made my photos look a bit funky--I prefer the HDR mode on the iPhone 4S's camera. You can also add Instagram-like filters to your photos, but I don't think they look very good. A better bet would be to add a third-party app like, well, Instagram or Pixlr, which has even more filters.

Overall, HTC has done a great job with the One S's still camera. It could certainly fill in for a stand-alone camera. The video camera looked just okay. My test video looked a bit shaky and it has a bit of a dark cast.

Multimedia

Before you start loading music, apps, videos, and other content onto your One S, know this: You're capped at 16GB of internal memory. That sealed back means you have no access to a microSD slot. Expandable memory is something that most Android phones have over the iPhone and Windows Phones, in terms of hardware. So when an Android phone maker decides not to include a microSD slot, I have to wonder why. My suspicion is that HTC wanted to keep the One S as slim as possible, and that adding a microSD slot would have added some bulk.

If you can't work with a 16GB limit, there is some good news: One S owners get 25GB of Dropbox storage, which is free for two years (the length of the carrier contract). Dropbox is integrated throughout the phone's user interface in apps such as the photo gallery; so, for instance, you can snap a photo and then upload it directly to Dropbox. As someone who uses Dropbox for practically everything--from moving music around to sharing documents--this is a big deal for me.