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The selfie. It’s a term that you now hear every day. It seems that everyone is taking selfies and posting them on the various social media outlets, whether its President Obama or the Pope, or the countless celebrities trying to keep themselves in the public eye. Everyone is trying to get in on the act, and while Samsung got into trouble trying to take advantage of the selfie craze with their publicity stunts, Sony have chosen a different path by announcing the Xperia C3 smart phone that is designed to take high quality selfies.
The Xperia C3 is a mostly a mid-range handset, but what really sets it apart is its wide-angle 5MP front-facing camera. I hear you say that the HTC One M8 also has a 5MP Selfie camera with a wide angle lens, and you’d be entirely correct, but where the C3 differs is the inclusion of a flash to accompany the selfie camera. Which means you’ll be able to take well -lit selfies of you and 30 of your best friends virtually anywhere you like.
To celebrate the release of the Xperia C3, Sony have given us this fantastically informative infographic (below). As you can see, the first selfie is believed to have been taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius who took a self-portrait (to use the correct term) via the daguerreotype process. In case you aren’t quite hip with these olden day terms, I’ve done some research for you. The daguerreotype process was the first practicable method of producing permanent images with a camera, which involved images being copper plates being ‘developed’ with the help of mercury fumes. These images are then made permanent with the help of thiosulphate of soda. The images could now be produced in merely 20-30 minutes, whereas before the process was discovered by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in 1839, images could take hours to be developed.
The term ‘selfie’ has permeated our lives, increasing in use by a staggering 17000% since 2012 and being named ‘Buzzword of the Year’ in 2012 by Time Magazine, and ‘Word of the Year’ by Oxford Dictionary in November 2013.
Just who is taking all these selfies though? Its not just famous people, apparently 47% of adults are taking selfies as well, with people between the ages of 18-34 admitting to taking a selfie at least once a week. Women are 1.3 times more likely to take a selfie than men. There are more interesting facts to be found in the infographic, from the various types of selfies to the city that takes the most selfies in the world. And surprisingly, it’s not a US city.
Do you take selfies? If so, what kind? And more importantly, would you be interested Sony’s Xperia C3? Let us know in the comments or at our Google Plus page.
