DxOMark just released their review of the HTC One M9's camera. I'm not going to beat around the bush, the results aren't great (not that any of us here at AP are all that surprised). The HTC One M9 scored a rather abysmal cumulative score of 69, placing the Taiwanese manufacturer's latest flagship in 22nd place on DxOMark's top mobile camera list.

That places the M9 21 spots behind the Samsung Galaxy S6/S6 Edge, which currently sits in the number one spot. The M9 also lags behind other ultra modern behemoths of the mobile photography world, such as the Amazon Fire Phone, the LG G2, the iPhone 4s, and the Samsung Galaxy S3. Ouch.

It's not all bad news for HTC though, they did outfit the M9 with a better camera than the M8...barely. The M9 scored just one point higher than the M8, which currently ranks 23rd. That, folks, is what you call an incremental update!

DxOMark's full review is quite exhaustive and a great read for anyone thinking about purchasing an M9. I won't break down the whole article here, but the pros and cons section at the end does a great job summing things up.

So, to summarize the summary, if lighting is bright, the M9 takes some pretty decent photos and video. If lighting is poor, your results are going to be substantially worse with less detail, inaccurate white balance, and oversaturation.

The results, and the rear facing camera in the M9, are disappointing to me. I really loved my M7 and wanted this to be the device to convince me to come back to HTC. With two small kids at home, having a fast and exceptional camera is an essential element in any phone I own and from what I have read and heard thus far, the M9 just doesn't cut it.

Perhaps some more software tweaking will make a difference in the future, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I hope HTC works things out with the M10, because I think they are running out of chances to impress in an increasingly competitive mobile world.