Nokia 8 Bothies Aren't The Camera Gimmick We Wanted

Selfies are mundane and so Nokia is hoping to shake things up with a camera feature it has dubbed 'bothies.' If you pronounced that in your head as 'bah-these,' you're not the only one, but that's not what Nokia is going for. Pronounced 'both-eez,' the name refers to recording/shooting with both of a phone's cameras at the same time, combining the content into a single photo or videos.

The gimmick isn't new, and it isn't popular, though one could argue that the lack of popularity is due to the lack of an easy way to use both cameras at once. The Nokia 8 will fix that, offering two-way camera shooting as a standard feature. Point the camera at yourself, the other camera at a friend, and take a picture of you both together...but not exactly together, just close enough.

'Bothies' involve the use of Nokia's Dual Sight technology, and it supports livestreaming from both cameras at once, as well as taking content to be saved and then shared. The livestreamed videos can be used with both YouTube and Facebook. The photos or videos are presented side-by-side, serving something akin to a picture-in-picture arrangement but in a way that is more suitable for viewing on a small phone screen.

The idea here seems to be that at the moment, you can take a 'selfie' by having someone smoosh in next to you, but not all situations are primed for that. Maybe you're out at a restaurant and you want to livestream both yourself and the people on the side of the table. 'Bothies' make that a possibility. Whether consumers are actually interested in recording, shooting, or livestreaming these situations is yet to be seen.

Of course, you don't have to wait for the Nokia 8 to take your own 'bothies' using your existing handset, assuming it has both a front and a rear camera. Some existing apps available in the app stores bring this functionality to any phone, such as Frontback (iOS | Android), which is exactly what it sounds like. The Nokia 8 will arrive next month.