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Outside, in the hour after sunrise or before sunset, with the phone held at your eye level by a friend or on a timer, taking far more shots than you think you need. Light and distance do almost all the work; the camera is not the problem.
The two things that ruin most self-taken photos are overhead midday sun, which puts shadows in your eye sockets, and holding the phone too close, which distorts your face.
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Soft and from the front. Overcast days are ideal. If it is bright, stand in open shade - the edge of a building, under a tree - facing the open sky rather than the wall.
Never shoot with the sun behind you unless you want a silhouette, and never use the phone's flash on your own face.
Have the camera at least two metres away and zoom in rather than stepping closer. Close-range phone lenses enlarge whatever is nearest, which is your nose, and everyone can tell something is off even when they cannot say what.
Camera at your eye height, not above or below. Slightly turned body, face towards the lens.
Take a hundred and keep four. Every person who photographs well is taking many more photographs than you are, not looking better than you in each one.
Change one thing between sets: a different jacket, a different background, standing versus sitting. Four near-identical photos are worth less than four different ones.
Prop the phone at eye height against something solid, set a ten-second timer with burst mode, and walk into frame doing something rather than posing - looking off to the side, adjusting a sleeve, mid-laugh at nothing. Posed self-timer photos read as posed; the in-between frames do not.
Do not use a mirror. A mirror selfie in the lead position is read as a lack of anyone willing to take your photo, fairly or not.
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