LG P710 Optimus L7 II - CCD front-facing camera with connector-7048

A front-facing camera, commonly known as a selfie camera, is a common feature of

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s, tablets, laptops, and some handheld video game consoles. While stand-alone cameras face forward, away from the operator, tablets,

s 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 Live preview is a feature that allows a digital camera's display screen to be used as a viewfinder. This provides a means of previewing framing and other exposure before taking the photograph. In most such cameras, the preview is generated by m ...

of the image. These are called front-facing cameras and are important for

videotelephony Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...

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 The Game Boy Camera (GBC), released as in Japan, is a Nintendo accessory for the handheld Game Boy game console. It was released on February 21, 1998, in Japan, and manufacturing was ceased in late 2002. As a toy for user-generated content, it ...

, released in Japan in February 1998. The Game Boy Camera was an attachment for

Game 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 t ...

. The first front-facing camera phone 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, telecommunic ...

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 ...

front-facing camera. It stored up to 20 JPEG digital images, which could be sent over

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

, or the phone could send up to two images per second over Japan's

Personal Handy-phone System The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), also marketed as the Personal Communication Telephone (PCT) in Thailand, and the Personal Access System (PAS) and commercially branded as ''Xiaolingtong'' () in Mainland China, was a mobile network system o ...

(PHS)

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

cellular network. 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 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 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