Forget about the selfie stick. The SELFLY smartphone case transforms into a flying drone that follows you autonomously. The drone hovers to keep you in its camera, and you can trigger the drone’s camera when you’re ready.
Who is SELFLY?
SELFLY is a company named after their flagship product. Hagay Klein is the founder & CEO. They hail from Boston, and their design is patent pending.
The SELFLY team consists of experts in orthodontics, aviation, computer science, industrial design, software development, and electronics.
How does it work?
The device “rests” as your smartphone case and transforms into drone mode when you need it. The drone stores raw data on RAM and streams a live feed to the app on your smartphone. Once you hit the shutter, a high-quality photo will be taken.
Is it a real drone?
SELFLY is a micro UAV. It autonomously remains in midair, but it also allows you to control remotely via the app. Your average drone can indeed be mounted with cameras as well and yet, you don’t usually carry a drone around. This is where the SELFLY has its advantage. It acts as a smartphone case, and you take it around with you all the time. If there’s a photo opportunity, you can deploy it relatively quickly and make use of this new kind of “selfie.”
What about the pricing?
SELFLY is planned to hit the shelves for about $139. Larger drones with similar capabilities start at around $500. Right now you can support their Kickstarter campaign and reserve a unit for $89 until March 10, 2017, or until they are sold out. Until now, 3,436 people have backed them up with a total crowdfunding amount of $388,365 in only a few days. Their goal for 30 days was $125,000.
Design
Is it a little clunky? It sure is. It’s considerable thin tech (9mm), and yet it seems somewhat bulky when in case-mode. Yet it seemingly fits your average jeans pockets. I thought the design looks a bit Sci-Fi inspired too, it’s not ugly. It would also be wise to make this fit all kinds of phones, so I believe they made the best out it. They will provide you with a black and a white version.
Summary
This is really interesting tech. The mix of tiny autonomous drone technology combined with the aspect of leveraging the selfie trend could cause some disruption to the market of photography enthusiasts. If SELFLY manages to incorporate video functionality and keep the quality up on par with competitive products, such as the GoPro drone “Karma,” they could manage to dominate the price range between advanced selfie sticks and larger drones.
YouTube: SELFLY – The Smart Autonomous Flying Phone-Case
Photo credit: SELFLY
