Living with a phone without a selfie camera (sort of)،
“Vanity is the quicksand of reason,” wrote George Sand 200 years ago. Human beings are narcissistic by nature, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. It's part of a healthy ego. We can talk about obsession with ourselves and other unhealthy behaviors, but the fact is that we love ourselves. And that's perfectly fine.
The overly dramatic intro above serves here as a preamble to the story of the smartphone selfie camera. I'm not going to bother you with a boring history lesson. All I'll say about it is that the first phone selfie camera was invented in Japan in May 1999, almost 25 years ago, and since then it has been an integral part of our smartphone experience.
25 years ago, the Kyocera VP-210 launched the selfie revolution
It's not called a selfie camera for nothing. By the way, the history of the word itself is quite interesting. The first use of the word “selfie” is attributed to Nathan Hope, an Australian who got drunk on his 21st birthday and posted a photo of his stitched lip with the caption “sorry for the clarification, it was a selfie.” It all took off quickly from there, and now we're inundated with selfies taken by our selfie cameras. So what would you say to living without it?
The Nubia Z60 Ultra and its obscured front vision
Now you see me, now you don't! When it's too bright around you, the Nubia will show a tiny sun on the selfie camera. Cute!
Disclaimer. By now, you've probably realized that this is the Nubia Z60 Ultra I'm going to talk about, and yes, this phone technically has a selfie camera hidden under its screen. But bear with me; I'll show you why living with this phone is like living with a phone without a selfie camera.
How good are selfies on a phone with an under-screen camera?
The short answer is “bad.” It's much better than the first prototypes from a few years ago, but it's still on the verge of unusability. Let's look at things from the perspective of vanity. The only way to get a pretty decent selfie photo is to be in an evenly lit room, not too bright, not too dark. And that's an important requirement, considering you're supposed to capture the moment with the portable device you carry with you everywhere.
From barely usable to horrible
As you can see from the examples above, any lighting coming from behind makes the image look horrible. There is ghosting, blurring, strange rainbow highlights (probably due to the polarizing filter on top of the camera), severe overexposure, noise when it's dark, and a lack of details. I could go on. In the end, I didn't use the front camera at all.
And by the way, this piece was supposed to be called “Living with a Phone with an Edge-to-Edge Screen”, but the experience somehow turned into this. Using portrait mode outdoors may or may not produce passable selfies, but ultimately there isn't a single image from this phone's front camera that I'm willing to post to my Facebook or my Instagram.
Portrait mode improves things a bit
I can almost hear your thoughts now. “But the selfie camera isn’t just for selfies.” Certainly, while people primarily use the front camera to capture their favorite images of themselves, there are things like video calls and meetings. Well, I have to report that these also look horrible on the Nubia Z60 Ultra. So how is life without a selfie camera?
Living without a selfie camera (usable)
Not so bad, actually. In my case, during my time with this phone, I only missed being able to capture the moments I was with my friends and loved ones. And this could easily be fixed by asking other people to take photos of you. You know, old school, like you have a compact camera with you. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not a problem.
Video calls and video meetings are a lot trickier, and if you want to project yourself in the best light on the other side, both literally and metaphorically, that front-facing camera won't cut it. So if you make a lot of video calls, you need to wait for this technology to mature. But is it really worth it?
Is edge-to-edge display worth sacrificing your vanity?
Watching this review on an edge-to-edge screen is a pleasure! Do you like what you see?
Okay, we've already established that it's not about vanity, but it seems so much more dramatic this way, right? What's it like to consume media and watch everyday smartphone tasks on a phone with an edge-to-edge display? It's really cool; There is no doubt about it. The first few days, you are impressed every time you look at the screen. It's an all-screen phone!
Okay, not as attractive (speaking of the phone, of course) but is it that bad?
But being human means adapting, and we quickly stop noticing that. I had the chance to compare this phone with a few Xperia models, and I like the Sony phones a lot more. Not only do they have a blemish-free 21:9 display, but they also come with working selfie cameras. And the top and bottom bezels aren't much thicker. Are a few millimeters worth it? Not for me.
Final words (of warning)
Sometimes the tech industry descends into strange obsessions. Glass phones, curved screens: the quest for edge-to-edge screens. I really don't know if we should focus on these things when we can try to solve our battery problems, for example.
I'd rather have a smartphone with sizable bezels that can last a week than a museum piece where hundreds of thousands of R&D dollars were wasted to hide a selfie camera. But maybe that's just me. And you?
