What's the next big thing after selfie?

‘The front-facing camera currently seems to stand rather low on the list of system-critical features consumers demand,” observed PocketNow in a chin-stroking article in March 2012. “With the primary focus of this secondary camera aimed at video calling …one would think there would be a corresponding eruption in the usage of mobile video services. This explosion hasn’t happened.”

Such are the perils of jumping too far forward in trying to read social signals. It turned out that a front-facing camera was terrific for taking stills — and then meant stills featuring you, the phone owner. We all know what happened next. Taking a picture of yourself is hardly new; cameras have had timers for ages so you could set them on tripods and run around in front. What’s new is being able to see what you’re photographing, and do it at arm’s length.

The fascinating thing about selfies, now a culture-engulfing phenomenon, is how unintentional they were. The technology business (as opposed to the wilder internet) has only done this a few times; the only other example that comes easily to mind is the text message, aka SMS, which began as a means for control of mobile networks, then morphed into a messaging system for anyone. That was intentional, though, whereas the front-facing camera, the Sony Ericsson Z1010 in 2003, seems to have been one of those features that uncovered a consumer desire pretty much by accident. It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to pop out of a focus group. And if you see a front-facing camera on a phone, and are told it’s for video calling, you’re probably going to judge it by those criteria.

Who discovered that actually you could get a pretty respectable picture using the front-facing camera of their phone (and which phone it was) sadly isn’t noted. But it’s possible that they posted the result to a social network; years ago, that would have been the photo-sharing site Flickr, where a search on hashtag “selfie” shows an explosion in the number taken, from 48 in 2001 to nearly half a million in 2014. (There are actually more with that tag apparently taken in 2000, but I’m dubious about some: I think they’re more likely modern smartphones with wrongly set dates.)

Front-facing cameras

Of course, phone companies noticed the growth of the selfie, so have thrown themselves into offering front-facing cameras which they hope will have that elusive must-have quality. Microsoft emphasised the wide-angle lens on some of its Lumias — though one suspects that would just make your nose look big. LG and Lenovo, meanwhile, are offering phones which have not one but two front-facing cameras. (There’s only one on the back.) What’s the second one for? Lenovo says the subsidiary two-megapixel camera, yoked to the main 8MP selfie one, “analyses depth of field information to replicate human binocular vision” to “unleash a myriad of new possibilities that can give selfies a creative twist”. (Mainly changing the focus point or blurring out a photo-bomber.) LG, meanwhile, with its V10, uses one to take “normal” selfies and the other to take “wide angle” shots which it can stitch together into a coherent whole.

They are nice twists on the idea — the refocusing one was introduced for the back camera in 2013 by HTC with its One model; strangely it was ditched in 2015.

Lenovo’s idea seems the more promising, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that both are trying to mine an exhausted seam. The selfie has already moved off the camera to the selfie stick (another idea you’d struggle to extract from a focus group). There must be another phenomenon out there, some overlooked feature that an eager teen with a sense of exploration and a lot of friends is going to realise is really cool if you... What is it, though? Selfies fitted into a growing obsession with the self (measurable by fitness trackers and Facebook growth). What’s next in our cultural evolution? It’s probably lurking somewhere on your phone. You’ll know it when you see it.

The Observer