Ok, let me start out by saying I know very very little about photography. I pretty much just leave it on Auto. I mean, I know how to switch between different presets (Auto, Portrait, Night, HDR, etc.) and that you can tap to focus there.... that's about it. I don't know how to set ISO levels or anything else.
Anyway, so I was at a 3-day event a few weeks ago, and was hoping that my M8 was going to be a huge quality boost over my EVO 3D. Sure, the photos would be 4MP instead of 5 (Though most of my photos were 2MP anyway since I mostly shot in 3D) but I figured the phone being several years newer and having high low-light performance would offset that.... boy was I wrong.
I noticed that my indoor photos were kinda fuzzy and blurry, even with my hand held still (thank you HTC for removing the OIS...) so I resorted to taking the same photos 2-4 times and hope I can pick a "best shot" out of the batch later when I could review all my photos on a PC. (Yes, I know I can hold the shoot button to make it auto-snap quick images, but I wouldn't have time to review and select the best out of each one for each photo I took). Even with this many of them even with perfect focus were still pretty terribly grainy/noisy, some even out of a batch of 5-6 remained blurry.
Outdoor where there is a lot of sunlight...... had it's OWN problems! Any object, sign, wall, or person clothed in white was overexposed to near comical levels! I had taken many shots, both with the subjects in focus and out (on a shaded area so it used more light on the subjects) and both on auto and flash off. This resulted in photos that were kinda badly over-exposed to photos that were so badly overexposed anything with white in it just looks like a bunch of white blobs! Even of the ones where it managed to get decent exposure on the subjects, the image was overly dark and anything not in focus which was white was still overexposed to the point of any and all detail being lost. (Seriously, it was so bad that there were signs which just looked like a solid white rectangle or circle, no words or symbols could even be noticed on them).
I took over 2000 photos (over 4 gigs worth) during those three days, mainly just mashing the shutter button at slightly different settings and angles hoping one out of every 20 or so would at least be usable... and to say that I can even get 100 to 200 "passable" photos out of these 2000+ would be a stretch!
The other day I was experimenting with the HDR option that I was advised to try which should hopefully alleviate these under/over exposed issues. Purposely shooting white objects in bright outdoor conditions in different conditions with HDR on and off. Didn't really help. The condition or light focus on which I shot them in HDR mode seemed to not matter, but the image was still fairly over-exposed. Not AS bad as when the focus is off the white object, but still pretty close (and still nowhere near as good as when the focus IS on the white object). On top of that, many of the HDR photos looked washed-out and with dulled colors (I thought HDR made colors more vivid?).
So I am at a loss, I don't know if this is a problem with my new expensive phone which I am stuck with's camera, if I am just using it horribly incorrectly, or both. (I remember several reviews mentioning over-exposure being an issue, but I didn't expect it to be worse than my EVO 3D, and it was mostly for background objects).
Does any have any tips or advice on what I can do?
I was honestly not excited about the camera but I am satisfied with it for quick snaps. If I need 16mp or more I will bring my Canon. 
