The Rise Of The Front-Facing Camera
by Mashum Mollah Technology 28 August 2019
According to OPPO, 90 percent of the world’s population will have a smartphone within 4 years. From apps that facilitate daily activities and goals (e.g., fitness, banking) to being a medium to pass time, smartphones have become an integral part of our lives.
It’s fair to say that there’s one major use of the front-facing camera on your phone: selfies. Of course, it’s certainly a lot easier than physically moving the phone to try to take your own picture, trying to hit the button and hoping you got everything in the shot.
With technological and digital advancements in smartphone cameras improving day-by-day, users are taking professional like images of themselves and using the same as profile pictures on different social media pages. However, it might come as something of a shock to some people that the camera on the front of your phone was not intentioned to take selfies.
The World’s First Front Facing Camera
As first reported by news.com.au, the first front camera was the Sony Ericsson Z1010 in 2003. With a 0.3-megapixel camera that was directed straight at the user, the original plan was to use it for video conferencing. The chunky flip phone was the first to introduce a front lens to the world, allowing the user to connect with others in business calls.
With this in mind, however, it’s crazy to see how popular the front-facing camera has become, with companies like Samsung making significant improvements to their front cameras for better selfies and video.
Others are certainly taking notice – with Apple and OPPO adding features like dual cameras and 5x lossless optical zoom respectively in their phones, it’s obvious that the selfie has become an important part of people choosing a particular phone.
Dangers of Selfies in 2019: Personal Injury and Mental Health Issues
In recent years, selfies have become some sort of obsession. Many medical journals and health organizations have also called it an illness. In terms of data, more and more people are now shooting selfies with their cell phones. According to the non-profit organization, Rawhide–
- Users all over the world click in excess of 93 million selfies.
- Instagram records a 1000 selfies every ten seconds on its platform.
- Almost 3 quarters of photos sent on Snapchat are selfies.
- Every year, teens spend almost seven full workdays snapping away.
- According to stats, more people died when taking selfies than the number of deaths due to shark attacks in the world.
People love taking photos – in particular, selfies – so much that programs like Snapchat and Instagram were created to allow people to post their selfies to their heart’s content. In addition, users could add filters and edits to spice up their photos.
Phone companies are picking up on this, too. The rise of augmented reality lenses for Instagram and Snapchat has made selfies fun, and therefore some phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S8, have unique filters and lenses built-in.
How Smartphone Companies are using Selfie Features to Boost Sales
It’s not just Samsung paying special attention to the selfie game, though. Apple made sure to highlight the 7-megapixel selfie camera and the retina flash on the iPhone 7, while Xiaomi is turning heads with an “age guesser”, an augmented reality feature designed to help you take younger-looking selfies depending on the angle of the shot. The evolution of phones and particularly their cameras, has allowed us to be more expressive and creative with our pictures, whether normal or selfie.
There’s a lot of tech that’s gone into phone cameras and selfies in general, but next time you try to find that perfect angle, spare a thought for the original camera phones and their original use. People won’t anticipate the newest phone for their technical features soon, it’ll definitely come down to how well the front-facing camera performs in producing flattering selfie portraits.
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