I heard many smartphone users use the selfie camera as a mirror. I never knew it was a thing, though I might have seen a few people doing it over the years. Anyhoo, one design veteran, Jakub Zeg, who has worked at Apple, Meta, and OpenAI, thinks the current way of doing things—you know, opening the full camera and flipping it—is slow.
I don’t know why this is time-sensitive that you need to fire up the selfie camera directly and super fast, but god damn it, I wish Zeg’s Lock Screen Mirror Concept were real! In this concept, Zeg proposes using one of the lock screen buttons—which is customizable, by the way—to open the camera already flipped. All users have to do is hold down the designated button—in Zeg’s example, it is the left lock-screen button (which he has a contact icon on for the sake of the example). The selfie camera then fires up into a round UI from the Dynamic Island. If you ask me, it is cool as hell.
I believe this is a concept only. I read the comments, and some folks expressed security concerns. Well, that is why it is a concept. To implement this would require some thorough planning. I mean, we already can open the camera app without unlocking, isn’t it? Perhaps those worries are unfounded. I don’t know.
Whatever the case, it feels like it should be a thing—even if I am not such a huge “selfie camera as mirror” person.
Images: X (@yakuzeg).
