It doesn't seem to do noticeable smoothing... The thing is, ALL phone camera lenses, by default, are going to have noticeable barrel distortion close up because the lenses are so small and are all, effectively, wide-angle:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion_(optics)  So they now try to correct this now in various ways, but they HYPERcorrect it.  The effect can be...freakish.  I don't look anything like myself from less than 6 feet away. EDIT:  There's this guy's explanation, which points the finger at focal length:  https://bakerdh.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/face-distortion-is-not-due-to-lens-distortion/ My face, if it is normally #1, looks SOMETHING like between #3 and #4 but with some obvious post-processing things done, too, so it looks actually plausibly real-life human rather than clearly messed up. Here's a pic of a similar "beautyface" menu:  http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/support/skp/faq/1092046  Notice the "slimming."