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A front-facing camera, commonly known as a selfie camera, is a common feature of cameras, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and some handheld video game consoles. While stand-alone cameras face forward, away from the operator, tablets, smartphones and similar mobile devices typically have a camera facing the operator to allow taking a self-portrait photograph or video while looking at the display of the device, usually showing a live preview of the image. These are called front-facing cameras and are important for videotelephony and the taking of selfies. Often, the preview image is by default a mirror image, which is more intuitive for most people; this default can be overridden, and in any case the recorded image is not reversed.
A front-facing camera, commonly known as a selfie camera, is a common feature of cameras, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and some handheld video game consoles. While stand-alone cameras face forward, away from the operator, tablets, smartphones and similar mobile devices typically have a camera facing the operator to allow taking a self-portrait photograph or video while looking at the display of the device, usually showing a live preview of the image. These are called front-facing cameras and are important for videotelephony and the taking of selfies. Often, the preview image is by default a mirror image, which is more intuitive for most people; this default can be overridden, and in any case the recorded image is not reversed.
History
Perhaps the first front-facing camera on a hand-held device was the Game Boy Camera, released in Japan in February 1998. The Game Boy Camera was an attachment forGame Boy
The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same tea ...
.
The first front-facing camera phone
A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture photographs and often record video using one or more built-in digital cameras. It can also send the resulting image wirelessly and conveniently. The first commercial phone with color ca ...
was the Kyocera
is a Japanese multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. It manufactures industrial ceramics, solar power generating systems, telecommun ...
Visual Phone VP-210, released in Japan in May 1999. It was called a "mobile videophone" at the time, and had a 110,000-pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the sm ...
front-facing camera. It stored up to 20 JPEG digital images
A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with ''finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions f ...
, which could be sent over e-mail, or the phone could send up to two images per second over Japan's Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) wireless cellular network
A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas called "cells", each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (typically thr ...
.
Several mobile phones with front-facing cameras were released to Western markets in 2003, including the NEC e606, NEC e616 {{Notability, Products, date=March 2015
The NEC e616 mobile phone is a handheld 3G phone from NEC Corporation.
Rechargeable battery
The e616 takes Lithium ion batteries, which are available in different capacities:
* 780 mA·h standard battery ...
, Sony Ericsson Z1010
The following is a list of products manufactured under the Sony Ericsson brand. Most of the models have been released under multiple names, depending on region of release, currently usually indicated by a letter added to the end of the model numb ...
and Motorola A835. The front-facing camera was originally intended for video-conferencing. The Motorola A920 was released in 2003 as well and may have been the first smartphone with a front-facing camera.
In May 2017, the Essential Phone
The Essential Phone (officially Phone or PH-1) is a discontinued Android smartphone designed by Android co-founder Andy Rubin, and manufactured, developed and marketed by Essential Products. The phone was announced on May 30, 2017 and released ...
introduced the notch - the removal of part of the display to accommodate the front-facing camera. The iPhone X
The iPhone X (Roman numeral "X" pronounced "ten", also known as iPhone 10) is a smartphone designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is part of the 11th generation of the iPhone. Available for pre-order from October 27, 2017, it was re ...
popularized this concept after its introduction in late 2017.
As of 2019, several smartphones incorporate front cameras that pop up from within the smartphone to allocate the area that would be otherwise utilized by notches to the screen. Under-display cameras are under development, which would place a camera under a special display that would allow the camera to see through the display.
References
{{reflist Cameras Self-portraits Japanese inventions