Best Smartphones for Taking Selfie Photos : Top 2015 Models With Front-Facing Soft LED Flash

Happy New Year, TP Friends! First of all, I want to thank you for all the support that you showered me in 2015. Let's stay together in 2016 and keep in touch; Feel free to leave comments here in my blog or send me your messages via my social networking accounts. May God continue to bless us abundantly this new year!

As many of you know, taking selfies has become one of the things that I love doing using my smartphones. So to kick off 2016, allow me to share with you what I believe are the Top 3 Selfie-Centric Smartphones with Front-Facing LED Flash that were launched in 2015. I highly recommend all of them to any consumer like me who enjoys taking photos of themselves and their loved ones using their handsets' front cam.

I've been fortunate to have played with smartphones with good front-facing cameras last year. Some of them are better than others in snapping selfies -- and based on my extensive testing, resulting photo quality, and personal preferences, there are the Best Selfie Smartphones of 2015. These are the ones that gave me my best selfies last year.

Best Selfie Smartphones
(L-R) Starmobile Knight Spectra, Asus ZenFone Selfie, Sony Xperia C5 Ultra

Best Selfie Smartphones
Check out their sexy backs!

What's common about all of these models? These three have high-resolution front-facing cameras that are just about as powerful as their rear cameras. Usually, tech bloggers use the term 'main camera' to describe the shooter at the back of smartphones but in the case of this trio, that phrase could also describe their selfie snapper in front. Also, these models have front-facing Soft LED flash with Torchlight function, which lets users adjust the lighting and white balance before taking a shot. On top of that, they come with advanced imaging algorithms that automatically fixes your selfies, evening out your skintone and making your great facial features stand out.

1. Sony Xperia C5 Ultra
Official Price in the Philippines: Php 17,999

Starting with the well-received Xperia C3, Sony Mobile has been one of the front runners in addressing consumers’ need for a great selfie-centric smartphone. Sony Xperia C5 Ultra incorporates an industry-first twin 13 MegaPixel front and rear camera set-up, which delivers stunning high-resolution images ready for sharing in social networking sites. Whether you’re shooting incredible scenery or taking a selfie with your family, officemates, or barkada, your shots are always captured in crystal-clear quality.

Best Selfie Smartphones

Sample Raw Selfie Shots Taken Using Sony Xperia C5 Ultra ~ Press for Larger View

Taken Using Torchlight, Indoors.

No front-flash indoor shot.

Sony Xperia C5 Ultra provides a high-quality viewing experience with its large display, complete with a super-thin bezel for a near-borderless display that makes this model a true stand-out when it comes to design and aesthetics.

The ultra- large 6-inch Full HD IPS panel features Sony’s legendary TV display technology Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 letting you enjoy your videos and pictures in the finest detail. Sony likewise included a one-handed operation mode to help you easily use the phablet with just one hand, with options for both right-handed and left-handed users.

Best Selfie Smartphones

Stellar gaming and overall mobile performance are assured by the phone's 64-Bit Octa Core 1.7 GHz ARM Cortex A53 and Mali-T760MP2 GPU based MediaTek MT6752 chipset that's complemented by 2GB of RAM for smooth multitasking and 16GB of expandable internal storage. And with its reliable Li-Ion 2,930 mAh battery delivering up to 2 days of uptime with regular use and up to 7 hours 47 minutes of video playback, you can rest assured that the phablet won't lose power during important moments. What’s more, Ultra STAMINA Mode further optimises battery usage to ensure greater efficiency.

2. Asus ZenFone Selfie
Official Price in the Philippines: Php 11,995

Asus ZenFone Selfie ZD551KL is a trailblazing fusion of fashion, technology, and craftsmanship allowing users see their ideal selves, with dual 13 MegaPixel autofocus cameras both featuring laser auto-focus for ultra-fast shots with complete clarity and the company's very own PixelMaster technology that enhances the quality of shots across various lighting conditions -- even in low-light environments.

Both the front and rear cams are engineered with five-prism Largan lenses and top-notch Toshiba sensors, and include dual-LED (orange and yellow) Real Tone flash technology for perfect illumination in any setting. Thanks to laser autofocus innovation and stellar optics, ZenFone Selfie is also capable of delivering superb macro photography that works on subjects as close as 6cm

Best Selfie Smartphones

Sample Selfie Shots Taken Using Asus ZenFone Selfie ~ Press for Larger View

Raw. Taken inside our house using the phone's front LED Torchlight.

Raw. Meet my mom! Taken without flash in a well-lit setting.

Asus ZenFone Selfie's 13 MegaPixel resolution front cam features a f/2.2-aperture plus 88-degree wide-angle lens to capture more of your every smile and persona. The phone's unique Selfie Panorama mode even lets you snap selfies with an outlook of up to 140 degrees, so everything and everyone you want to include in the shot can actually become a part of it.

As its heart, the more affordable LTE-enabled Asus ZenFone Selfie variant runs its Zen-UI-skinned Android 5.0 Lollipop OS with a 64-Bit Octa Core Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 chipset, has 2GB of RAM for multitasking, and comes with 16GB of expandable storage. The more expensive model, on the other hand, has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of ROM that users can also beef up using the device's microSD card expansion slot.

Best Selfie Smartphones

3. Starmobile Knight Spectra
Official Price in the Philippines: Php 14,990

Representing the absolute best that Filipino handset maker Starmobile has to offer to date, the Knight Spectra is the company's most beautiful, most feature-packed, and most powerful Android smartphone ever.

The handset - flaunting a stunning glass sandwich construction - features a 5.5-inch Full HD AMOLED display, which looks great from every angle, letting you enjoy photos and videos more. The smartphone also supports Digital TV broadcast providing high-quality TV viewing experience on the go.

At the back, the phone has a dual camera set-up. It's a combination of a 2 MegaPixel and 13 MegaPixel shooter, allowing you to play with DOF settings to produce many images from just one photo with varying blur and highlight effects, among others.

But perhaps the feature I love most about this model is its 8 MegaPixel front cam with Soft LED flash, which is perhaps the absolute best selfie-cam module you'll find on any Pinoy phone as of writing. To be totally fair to Starmobile, I know that they've been trying to perfect this feature for years now and I think they've finally cracked the code in doing it right.

Best Selfie Smartphones

Sample Selfie Shots Using Starmobile Knight Spectra ~ Press for Larger View

Raw. Taken outdoors at night using Front Flash.

Raw. Meet my younger brother. Taken without flash in a well-lit setting.

Best Selfie Smartphones

Under the hood, the Knight Spectra runs its near-vanilla Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system (incorporating Starmobile software innovations) with its 64-Bit Octa Core Snapdragon 615 chipset, has 3GB of RAM for efficient multitasking, and comes with 32GB of internal memory that you can easily beef up using the secondary hybrid nanoSIM slot doubling as a microSD card memory expansion slot, which supports up to 64GB.

Congratulations to the companies behind these amazing selfie-centric devices! Thumbs up! These three models are bound to receive our TechPinas Badge of Excellence for their trailblazing and industry-leading features noted in this post.