Martin Douglas Hendry

What is it?

Windows Phone OS devices have currently stabilized at 9.1% of the UK market share (1st Q 2014) – amid fierce competition primarily from iOS and Android devices. Despite this, on a global scale – the platform is actually predicted to grow from 3.9% of the global market share to 7% in 2018. This growth is at odds with predicted change on other platforms – that look set to shrink. Much of the ongoing success of this is the Windows Phones performance and popularity in emerging world markets (particularly Brazil, Indonesia and India). This is seen to be a consequence of strong device performance, lucrative price-points and solid integration with the widely used Windows desktop OS. Many of the successes attributed to Windows Phone wouldn’t have been possible without Nokia, who produce around 80% and 90% of devices shipped with the operating system.

This was a decision made by Nokia in 2011, in order to avoid a collision course with Samsung, who they thought would overbear them if they opted for Android. This partnership turned out to be a sound business choice, with the exceptional design and engineering on the Lumia range lending some crucial benefits, including a providing a distinct physical identity (high-quality colourful plastic handsets) to the OS. As a consequence, Microsoft recently purchased Nokia’s mobile handset business for $7.2 billion – and are looking at further ways to increase the impact of devices upon an increasingly saturated smartphone market – (albeit one they are performing well in globally).

One such widely reported innovation is the forthcoming Nokia “Superman” smartphone device – which is reported to feature a 5 megapixel front-facing camera.

Why is it important?

Current flagship devices only offer users a limited ability to create images using the front-facing camera (Samsung Galaxy S5 at 2MP, iPhone 5S at 1.2MP and Nexus 5 at 1.3MP). In this respect, 5MP offers a significant step up in the quality of image that will be produced with the camera facing inward. (Whilst megapixels do not technically define how accurately detailed an image will be, they do offer an indication of how much information the sensor will record, and thus the size of the image that will presented back to the viewer).

This move “makes sense” when we consider the sheer extent to which the front-facing camera has begun to be used by smartphone photographers – with the Telegraph reporting that 30% of pictures taken by those between the ages of 18-24 being “selfies” – or self-portraits created this way (with men more guilty than women for indulging themselves). Whilst the “selfie” does not account for the use of the front-facing camera (though would typically appear in images created using it) – it may be argued that what was a technology originally designed as a way of conducting video calls on the iPhone 4, has become more about static images than “Facetime”.

Front-facing camera discussed at 0:52, no mention of the selfie/inward photography…

As a consequence – we may argue that a primary reason that companies are investing in the front-facing camera (and in this case Windows/Nokia offering a 200+% increase in image size/quality) is a result of the popularity of the “selfie”, and the current disparity in fidelity between front and rear cameras. We may speculate that the front-facing camera is becoming as important to users as the traditionally placed rear camera.

How might this impact the social camera?

“Photography Turns Inwards”

Over the course of the past 3 years (since the release of the iPhone 4, and previous smartphones with front-facing cameras) the emergence of the “selfie” as a genre of photography has been exponential. In November 2013 (only two years after the front-facing camera first appeared) the word was entered into the Oxford dictionary – after a series of high-profile selfies were taken by celebrities: including the Pope, the world’s leading politicians (quite bizarrely at the funeral of Nelson Mandela), and most infamously a selfie of a group of Hollywood celebrities at the 2013 Oscar award ceremony – which as of writing has been re-tweeted by nearly 3,500,000 different users.

These news-worthy instances of the selfie appear to have validated the a widespread behaviour that before has been criticized by many as vain (even when used for philanthropic purposes) or even psychologically destructive to the selfie-er. Regardless, the “selfie” appears to be going nowhere with the emergence of dedicated sharing communities (#selfie on Instgram equates to over 100,000,000 images at the time of writing), platforms and apps emerging (such as Justin Bieber funded “Shots of Me”).

The infamous “Oscar selfie” taken by Ellen DeGeneres as part of a Samsung promotion. This image was seen by 37 million people worldwide and has been valued by marketers at Publicis between $800 million and $1 billion.

With the “Superman” phone (and the potential for further “selfie-centric” devices to follow it) – we see this validation occurring technologically – allowing people to create more detailed images containing themselves, whether for the purposes of vanity or otherwise.

Personally, I find it difficult to believe that the entire phenomenon described above hinges entirely upon a vanity on the part of the image creator – and that there is additional value to the selfie that may be being lost in translation (as we become distracted by the heresy to traditional photography that is the presence of a photographer within the image). It is this schismatic presence that might belie some of the key attributes that might explain the popularity of the selfie.

I propose two arguments that might explain a wider scope behind the selfie phenomenon.

An example of a “mirror-selfie” taken by me – a genre of selfie widely practiced before the widespread availability of front-facing cameras

Differentiation and Identity in Images

One of the most significant activities that occurs online today is the digitization (and interaction) of people’s identities online via social media. Social media is comprised of a range of different media formats – (typically words [statuses, comments etc.], audio, video and images). Throughout the exercise of digitizing ourselves through this media – research suggests ([1] [2] [3] these cover various online contexts) we often find ourselves trying to express an ideal online identity. This often occurs through selective posting of information – (i.e. posting in such a way to present ourselves how we want to be seen online, or avoiding posting altogether). This is not as easy to do in person-to-person exchanges – where people can see our reactions to what they say in real-time (this is why a bad email is easier to write than telling someone bad news in person).

In doing so, we find ourselves constantly trying to express ourselves through the media formats available to us. In this respect, the selfie may have become popular as a way of users investing their identity into images (and as a result of a difficulty in doing so without appearing in the frame themselves).

With exponential increase in the amount of images being created on a day to day basis – this drive or requirement to differentiate our own images from everybody elses’ by placing ourselves within them could be a very real driver in photo-sharing (and something that might tell us a lot about every day photographic practices). This is something that I will look to continue to explore through my research.

A contemporary style selfie where I am pretending that the image has been captured by someone else

The Selfie, Memory and Self-Appearance

Photography is an activity that has been has been linked to memory since its inception. It allows us to produce enduring recordings of the past including: people, objects, places and events, that we could forget without a prompt. Today, we produce more images than ever before – and therefore have even more visual material from which we can reconstruct previous (and often cherished) instances in our lives – and share them with others.

It may be argued that by being present within the image – not only are we recording a memory of the subject of importance – but critically, additional information about ourselves at the time of capture which is lost behind the lens (what we look like, indication about how we felt at the time and so on). In this way, we could argue that the selfie is a more effective tool of recording memory by showing us in addition to the subject of the image – how we were when we recorded it. Again, this is something I may look to explore in far more detail through my research.

(There is an abundance of literature in relation to photography, memory and the role of the photographer which it would turn this long post into a paper in it’s own right!)

Regardless, as the significance of the selfie continues to grow as a culture, (now technologically with the “Superman” – we should be aware that this only offers greater possibilities for an emerging technological field of photography in and of itself.