Sony Xperia C3 wants you to embrace the selfie

Announced today, the new Sony Xperia C3 phone features a 5-megapixel front-facing camera designed for high-quality selfies that can be easily shared on social media. 

Get ready to embrace selfies. 

Announced Tuesday and billed as the "world's best selfie smartphone," the Sony Xperia C3 features a 5-megapixel front-facing camera that sports a soft flash light and offers an 80-degree field of view. So, for those of you who have lamented the poor quality of your selfies, you may be in luck. 

These selfies will be displayed on the phone's 5.5-inch screen that lets users style and add effects to the pictures with a feature called "Portrait Retouch," similar to photo-retouching features that have recently been added to other camera apps, such as Instagram. 

And, of course, because we are in selfie land, this phone lets you easily share photos with friends "in three clicks." A feature called "Social live" lets you "broadcast your precious moments live," immediately receive comments from friends, and respond to those comments in real-time, all while remaining on the screen where you took the picture.  

Powered by Android 4.4 KitKat with a "lightweight and slim" phone frame, the "Xperia C3 is a unique new smartphone from Sony, created to offer the ultimate social sharing experience with a new powerful 'PROselfie cam'. It also presents a combination of the best of Sony, with leading digital imaging technology and brilliant specs and performance all for a mid-range price," says Calum MacDougall, Director of Xperia Marketing at Sony Mobile Communications, in a release. 

Mr. MacDougall adds that Sony is "excited" to play a role in the "global phenomenon" of selfies, noting that selfies have vastly increased since 2012. 

The Oxford English Dictionary officially added the word selfie in 2013 and defines it as such: "A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website." 

The phone also comes equipped with apps designed specifically for the selfie to let users go all Hollywood with their photos – they can add digital stickers such as pirate hats, horror faces, and laser eyes. 

Selfies aside, the back of the phone has an 8-megapixel camera with a flash that automatically adjusts to different light conditions with a feature called Superior Auto and accounts for motion disturbances by producing smooth pictures with a feature called SteadyShot. 

Other features include a Snapdragon quad-core 1.2 GHz processor and a battery-saving feature that senses when users are not using their phone's display screen and automatically turns off functions not being used while keeping on the functions users want. 

Mobile phone sales are predicted to reach 1.9 billion units in 2014 with 66 percent of those being smart phones, according to technology research firm IDC. Android devices currently dominate the smart phone market, comprising more than 80 percent of smart phone shipments in the first fiscal quarter of 2014, according to IDC.