ASUS has a new smartphone that’s designed specifically for selfies

Smartphones and tablets have had front facing cameras for many years now but the “selfie,” that is, the pictures of oneself, usually taken at arms’ length (but sometimes longer) is a relatively new phenomena. Unfortunately, many selfies consist of a young lady holding an Apple iPhone up to a mirror and using the rear camera despite Apple having invented the front facing camera back in 2010. One of the reasons for the continued reliance on the rear camera rather than the front facing camera is that for most devices, the front facing camera is of a lesser quality than the rear camera. It often has fewer pixels in the sensor, usually no flash and a simpler lens arrangement. Manufacturers assumed that people would use their front facing camera for video calling rather than personal portraits. We have seen a few handsets in recent years that place more emphasis on the front facing camera. The HTC Desire EYE is one example, which put a 13MP front facing camera into a device, matching the rear camera. We’ve also seen the Sony Xperia C3, which came with a 5MP front facing camera and wide angle lens. I could also put the HTC One M8 into this category, which uses a 5MP, wide angle front facing camera compared with a 4MP rear camera.