I have never taken a selfie in my entire life. The feature is entirely pointless for me. Are there any smartphones that don’t have a front facing camera?
How do you check for stuff in your teeth tho
If we’re lucky, someone might eventually invent some sort of reflective wall we can look at
Personally I don’t always carry a mirror but snark noted
Alexa, what is a mirror?
A mirror is a thing I don’t always have in my pocket. My phone, however…
ITT: people who are never more than 2’ from a mirror, apparently. Wtf y’all live and work in fucking Versailles?
I don’t think of it as a selfie camera, I think of it as a camera for video calls.
No mass market phone will come without selfie camera. And any special purpose phones will be too expensive. Maybe just buy one without notch and put a tape on it?
You could get a fair phone and remove the camera.
I was actually looking for the same thing - having a camera constantly pointing at me gives me anxiety (to the point where I’ve perfected the “cover hold” where I always have part of my thumb covering it), but gave up when I realised the compromises on other features I would need to make in order to get a phone without one (in the case of the Poco F2 Pro - an IP rating).
So I bought a “regular” phone and I’m now instead waiting for a delivery of some vinyl camera cover stickers, you can get them pretty cheap online (if you want to avoid amazon you might need to look a little harder, but they are available). My only concern is the other sensors in the camera notch that might be impacted (the always on display thinking the phone is in bag/facing down and not displaying for example), but am hoping I can find workarounds for those issues.
Privacy in general isn’t something phone manufacturers are going to be catering for since they make a ton of their money selling data and/or access to it, so it’d be counterproductive in their eyes.
Which I know isn’t really what you were asking, but I thought I’d let you know in case you came to a similar conclusion as me.
You could go to a cell phone repair joint and ask them to physically disconnect the camera’s data connections, or if that’s not easy (perhaps it’s soldered directly onto the motherboard) they could break the camera for you in a controlled manner. Probably wouldn’t cost much for an expert to shove a needle into exactly the right place.
Not exactly the same but I bought a used OnePlus 7 Pro when they started cutting holes in my display.
It has a pop up selfie camera so you can a) see when it is active and b) don’t have any notches on your screen.
Also makes for a great party gag.
I wish the popup feature went mainstream, I too dislike a peephole in my screen.
I wonder if they didn’t catch on because it made spying on people more difficult.
I use my front facing camera to see under things all the time. It’s very useful, even though I don’t take selfies. I’m an engineer though so I probably spend more time looking under things than most.
Just don’t use it, or put some sticker on it.
yea, but you’re still paying for it
You’re not. You’re getting it as a free bonus to the personal pocket computer that also has all the phone functions and some more.
I’d rather not have it at all tbh.
Not sure why it bothers you so much. Any benefit you’d have by not having it is practically negated by your limited choices for phones.
Like I said, it’s a feature I never use. The selfie camera is completely pointless for me and I’d rather not have it.
This is like saying you don’t want an apartment/house with a bathtub because you don’t take baths. Most people choose based on features they want regardless if it has one feature they won’t use. It’s just not generally worth the tradeoff of limiting your options when it’s such a common feature. If you absolutely can’t use a phone with a front facing camera though, then good luck with your search (genuine, not sarcastic).
Some banking apps are asking for live-selfies for authentication, so it’s not entirely useless.
