Hmm...ok then why not an N8 with android then?
if Nokia can do it right that piece of camera hardware, why cant HTC?
It's not just the HW, it's a trade-off for system resources.
The cybershot phones, for example, are basically a camera with phone capabilities, which is why they gave such good pictures.
Not only that, camera capabilities was a big selling point back then, not so much anymore as people want it to do a heap of other things too.
If you remember, phones were phones plus some other specific job that they were good at, eg phone+great music player, phone+great camera, phone+good satnav etc
I'm afraid with so much more going on in phones these days, taking a picture (which takes a lot of system resources) takes second place, as it has a whole bunch of other stuff to do.
Some, such as the iphone & N8, have OSs designed to dedicate more resources to the camera, HW & SW.
This is probably because they are marketed as more of a social networking tool, for which a good camera is necessary.
Not the dhd though, i'm all booted & rooted.
... & now they've got 3d to deal with