“自拍真爽，”《纽约时报》（New York Times）的莫莉•伍德 【Molly Wood，与好莱坞（Hollywood）一词押韵】说。“但手机的前置摄像头太差了。”

    伍德在周四的《纽约时报》上撰文称：“大部分主流手机上拍摄的自拍照效果基本都很差。这些照片不仅对焦不准、有马赛克、颜色过暗、曝光过度、背光太强、有颗粒感，而且最糟糕的是图像失真（我发誓，我的鼻子没那么大！）。”

    其中一些主流手机的自拍效果格外差。为了一探究竟，《纽约时报》财经板块科技副主编伍德前往时代广场，用“可以说是美国市场上最出色的4款拍照手机”逐一自拍。

    《纽约时报》网站上发布了一个视频，伍德在视频里说：“最令人惊讶的是，我不得不说，iPhone前置摄像头的效果实在不怎么样。”她之所以感到惊讶，是因为iPhone 5S配置有“一流的智能手机摄像头，完全能轻松替代卡片相机。”

    然而，用iPhone拍摄的自拍照令人大失所望。“焦距不一、颜色黯淡，而且失真最为严重（再次声明：我的鼻子真的不是长成照片上那样）。”

    至于其他几款手机……

    • “HTC One手机的自拍效果最好。照片焦距稳定、色彩鲜艳真实，而且在低光条件下，One摄像头的拍摄效果优于另外三款手机。”

    • “紧随其后的是诺基亚（Nokia）Lumia 1020。Lumia与One可谓势均力敌，尽管它的分辨率较低。不过，Lumia的室内拍摄效果不如室外。”

    • “三星（Samsung）GalaxyS4手机的焦距存在问题，导致自拍照效果不稳定，而且背景中任何明亮灯光都会导致照片严重曝光过度。”

    伍德对这四款手机的自拍效果都不满意。她认为，手机自拍效果不佳的原因在于，手机生产厂商迫于压力，只好把智能手机制造得越来越薄。伍德认为，“越来越薄”已成为手机设计的重要趋势，而始作俑者恰恰就是苹果公司（Apple）。

    不过，苹果可能还面临更大的问题。

    自拍和Facebook以及Twitter一样，是一个重要的社交媒体现象。伍德指出，“selfie”（自拍）一词是《牛津词典》评出的年度新词。而“#me”（ #我）是图片和视频分享应用Instagram上第三大热门标签。

    Instagram上的自拍照多达1.84亿张。苹果为什么看不见？

    译者：项航

    "Selfies are great," says the New York Times' Molly Wood (rhymes with Hollywood), "but the front-facing cameras on cellphones are terrible."

    "Selfies taken on most major smartphones," she writes in Thursday's issue, "are almost uniformly of poor quality. They're unfocused, pixelated, dark, blown-out, backlit, grainy and worst of all, distorted (I swear, I have a normal size nose!)."

    Some may be more terrible than others, however. So Wood, deputy tech editor for the Times' business section, set out for Times Square to shoot some pictures of herself with what she describes as "arguably, the four best camera phones in the U.S. market."

    "The big surprise," she says in a video posted on the Times' website, "is that I have to say I'm not very impressed with the iPhone's front-facing camera." She's surprised because the 5S has, in her words, "one of the best smartphone cameras available, and is easily capable of replacing a snapshot camera entirely."

    But the iPhone's selfies were a disappointment: "Its focus was inconsistent, colors tended to appear washed out, and its lens produced the most distortion of the bunch (once again: My nose does not look like that in real life)."

    As for the rest ...

    • "The HTC One produced the best selfies. They were consistently in focus and had rich, true colors, and the camera performed better in low light than the competition."

    • "The Nokia Lumia 1020 was a close second, despite its lower resolution, but indoor shots were worse than outdoor shots."

    • "The Samsung Galaxy S4 suffers from focus issues, so its selfies were inconsistent, and any bright lights in the background resulted in badly blown-out images."

    But none of the phones were good enough for Wood. She blames the pressure on manufacturerers to make every new generation of smartphones thinner than the old -- a design priority she lays at Apple's feet.

    But there may be a larger issue issue for Apple.

    Selfies, like Facebook and Twitter, are a major social media phenomenon. The word "selfie," Wood points out, was the Oxford Dictionaries' neologism of the year. And "#me" is the third-most-common tag on Instagram.

    With 184 million selfies on Instagram, how could Apple miss it?