I've had an 8X for about 6 months now. (Well actually I've had three, as the first two died for no reason.) I like the phone overall, but I'm perplexed by all the reviews that state it has an amazing camera, etc. In my experience, it takes terrible pictures about 90% of the time. I get the occasional lovely photo if the lighting is just so, and the subject is perfectly still. There's not much you can do about the need for proper lighting, but the virtual "shutter speed" is just broken on this phone. Yes, you can sometimes improve matters by keeping your hands still, but that's no help if the subject is in motion.
A simple comparison with my wife's iPhone 5, or even my old iPhone 3 - it's night and day. It's an exception when the iPhone doesn't capture a picture perfectly, and it's an exception when the 8X does. And yes, I've fiddled extensively with the camera settings - primarily to the effect of getting different flavors of mediocre. This is the single biggest bummer of having made the switch from Apple to Win8/HTC. Can anyone else confirm they've had the same experience? Are the "reviews" just online shilling, or am I crazy here?