As teased on Twitter last night, Sony has today announced the Sony Xperia C3 – their ‘Selfie’ phone, with a 5MP wide-angle front-facing camera and soft LED Flash.
According to Sony, the ‘selfie’ has increased 17,000% since 2012, so the reasoning behind producing a Selfie focused phone is right there. To aid in taking Selfies Sony added a Flash, as well as including a ‘PROselfie cam’ and selfie apps in the software on the phone, which include a whole range of options to spruce up your selfies.
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Superior Auto – on both main and front cameras.From illuminated night views to backlit selfies, Superior Auto recognises four scene types on C3’s front camera and up to 36 scenes by the main camera and adjusts the settings automatically, to help you get the best photos anywhere, in any light. As the default camera mode, Superior Auto turns HDR on or off depending on your scene. HDR mode takes multiple shots with varied exposures and then merges them together to make your photos look natural – even in backlit condition.
Portrait retouch v.2 – style your close-ups in real time. Portrait Retouch makes sure you’re captured looking your best with features including real-time makeover, DECO frame options and magic eye beam (light reflection) effects. Portrait Retouch offers a choice of 10 different beauty styles – including four natural looks for the guys – and the ability to retouch portraits of up to two people per image. You can see changes in real time, before capturing the shot to ensure a photogenic finish.
Timeshift-burst – always get the best picture. Timeshift-burst captures 31 frames in just 2 seconds – starting even before you press the shutter. Consumers can then scroll back and forth amongst the 31 frames to select the perfect image, or even keep them all.
Picture effects – create the best picture. Apply a wide selection of creative effects to your photos and change colours, add image trails or apply mirror effects. These adjustments enhance your images and open up a world of possibilities.
Movie Creator – create videos to be proud of. The new movie creator application allows you to trim and crop your videos so that you can easily edit what you want to share. Insert dramatic slowdown effects at one or more places on the timeline of the video so that you can preview your movie before you save and share.
Social live – broadcast your precious moments live. Social live lets you broadcast every moment as it happens live via Facebook. Get your friend’s response right on the screen and keep the conversation going, all in real-time, and go beyond social sharing as you know it.
Sweep Panorama – Take a panoramic photo by just sweeping the camera.
Vine – Create and share beautiful looping videos. Share six-second videos with friends and your social networks with this simple and exciting app.
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The phone will be available in Black and White, and in a departure from their recent colour scheme, they are offering a new colour – Mint. The phone comes with a large 5.5″ display, with a 1280×720 resolution and a 1.2GHz quad-core processor and supports up to 150 Mbps 4G/LTE networks.
- 5.5” 1280×720 HD IPS display
- Snapdragon Quad-core 1.2 Ghz processor
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB Flash memory
- 8 MP Rear camera with auto focus and 5MP Front-facing camera with LED Flash
- Android 4.4
- 2500 mAh Battery
- 156×78.5×7.6mm @ 150grams
The Xperia C3 will be launched as a Dual-SIM phone, starting in August in China, but rolling out globally. No word on when, or if it will reach Australia but we’ll be asking Sony Australia for more information.
Seems the specs line up with the intended demographic: teens and tweens. These groups more likely influenced by marketing and may not be financially able to purchase a flag ship device. Similar rationale to the Facebook phones a while back.
I could imagine better font facing cameras / flashes making their way to flagships.
Pretty big gamble to produce/market an entire phone just based on the selfie feature. Not sure how many consumers would purchase a phone just because it may take selfies a little better than other phones.
Guess we’ll have to see if there’s an Xperia Selfie 2 phone to determine whether it was worth it for Sony.
Absolutely useless.
Should just add selfie specs on their flagships.
There is no niche market for that.
I hope it has microSD support with it only having 8Gb of onboard storage.