We had mixed feelings about the HTC One (M8)’s Ultrapixel camera, which produced decent shots in certain conditions, but overall seemed to lack the dynamic range and detail of other high end cameras. In a bid to squeeze the maximum potential out of HTC’s flagship camera technology, XDA developer Jishnu Sur has created a mod which aims to improve the camera’s performance. The catch is that you’ll need root access to your phone.

Obviously the modifications are all taking place on the software side of things, so there’s only so much that can be done. Nevertheless, the mod makes a substantial number of tweaks to file bitrates in an effort to store higher quality files, alterations to color reproduction, as well as changes to the camera’s shutter speeds for help with different lighting conditions.

The images below show a difference between the HTC One (M8)’s stock auto mode and Jishnu’s modified auto, top and bottom respectively (click for full size). You can also find a collection of images taken with the mod by XDA member G-Bus right here.

Quite a few changes have been made to the camera’s functionality, so here’s a quick list for easy reading.

Made the Video Bitrates to CBR [Constant Bitrate] 35Mbps.

Added action scene.

Added flash and self-timer in burst scene mode.

Support for flash in EIS Scene mode.

Added flash for night mode.

Removed the fixed resolution limit for panorama shots.

Flash support added for panorama shots.

Self-timer support added for Panorama shots.

Support speed increase to 1/9000 and set the minimum shutter speed to 1/100.

Modified media profiles for better Audio Quality.

JPEG quality bumped to 95

Removed the hardcoded bitrate limited by HTC.

Sound bitrates improved from 156kbps to 192kbps for clearer and louder sound while recording.

Better color reproduction in all Manual, Auto and HDR modes.

To install the modification you will need root permissions and a custom recovery option to flash the zip file with, which you can download from here. As usual, it is recommended to make backups before flashing new files, just in case.

If you try it out, please let us know what you think.