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 instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s, tablets,

laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...

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

videotelephony Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

and the taking of selfies. Often, the preview image is by default a

mirror image A mirror image (in a plane mirror) is a reflection (physics), reflected duplication of an object that appears almost identical, but is reversed in the direction perpendicular to the mirror surface. As an optical phenomenon, optical effect, it r ...

, which is more intuitive for most people; this default can be overridden, and in any case the recorded image is not reversed.

History

While not a dedicated front-facing camera, the Casio QV-10 digital camera featured a lens that rotated 180 degrees. Introduced in 1995 it was the first consumer digital camera with a color LCD display. This allowed for the user to point the camera at themself while viewing the LCD display. 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 for

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

. The first front-facing

camera phone A camera phone is a mobile phone that 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 a color c ...

was the

Kyocera is a Japanese Multinational corporation, 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 genera ...

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 graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

front-facing camera. It stored up to 20

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

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 Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

, or the phone could send up to two images per second over Japan's Personal Handy-phone System (PHS)

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

cellular network A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless network, wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-locatio ...

. Several mobile phones with front-facing cameras were released to Western markets in 2003, including the NEC e606, NEC e616, 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. The first iPhone to include a front-facing camera was the

iPhone 4 The iPhone 4 is a smartphone that was developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the List of iPhone models, fourth generation of the iPhone lineup, succeeding the iPhone 3GS and preceding the iPhone 4s. Following a number of notable leaks, ...

. 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 numerals, Roman numeral "X" pronounced "ten") is a smartphone that was developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is part of the List of iPhone models, 11th generation of the iPhone. Available for pre-order from September 26, 2 ...

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 Camera features Self-portraits Japanese inventions