Selfie is a social phenomena that’s not going to go away anytime soon. In fact, the term ‘selfie’ may have been coined in recent years, the act of selfie, which is basically a photograph taken by oneself with an imaging device, has been around for decades. Come on, tell me you did not do it using a then-advanced 3.2MP Sony Cybershot or equivalent camera. Anyways, this post is not about the history of selfie. It is about the future of the selfie. Selfie stick? What, no. It’s a selfie drone, folks, and it is a gadget that will be responsible for burying selfie stick six-feet under. And it is called SELFLY, presumably a portmanteau of ‘selfie’ and ‘flying’, which is what it really is.
However, SELFLY is not the first camera drone phone case unlike one news site claimed and personally, I thought it is a tad less ‘attractive’, but it has one ‘powerful’ feature: affordability. Seriously, while the previous (and probably the actual first) camera drone phone case we saw cost around 179-269 euros, SELFLY costs just $99. That’s a huge deal cos’ some battery cases cost just as much, if not more. Furthermore, this selfie stick-free selfie solution will only bump up your phone thickness to 9mm and adding only 70g of mass, which means it should be easy on most pockets.
On the technical aspect, SELFLY is outfitted with an 8MP camera that records in 1080p at 30fps to an onboard storage while simultaneously live streams, at a lower quality, to the smartphone to enable first-person-view. Still images, on the other hand, are pushed to your mobile instantly. Flight control is via a dedicated companion app that offers two modes of flight: fly by stick and “photo-based initiative control,” or fly by picture. An onboard autopilot stabilization system ensure a stable flight so you can focus on taking selfie or welfie instead of fighting to control the craft, while intelligent video analysis enables face and smile detection, or follow you as you pull off epic stunts (or fails).
Finally, there is a built-in battery that’s good for 5 minute flight time and 20 selfie photos. SELFLY is designed for use with most 4.6-inch smartphones, but there are some dedicated phone cases catering to popular makes and models, like iPhone 6/6 Plus, iPhone 7/7 Plus, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy 7, Galaxy 7 Edge, and Nexus 6. SELFLY, which appears to hail from Boston, is now on Kickstarter where you can pre-order a unit for the said $99. Not surprisingly, being a piece of fun tech with all the promises and an affordable sticker, it was over subscribed by over 500 percent and so yeah, if goes as planned, this baby should be at your doorstep sometime in June 2017.
Images: SELFLY.