Android 4.2 Camera and Photo Sphere Ported to Older Jelly Beans

When Google upgraded its Android OS to Jelly Bean 4.2 a couple of days ago, the company unveiled a new camera app called Photo Sphere that lets you shoot 360-degree panoramas by waving your camera around. If you’ve been dying to play with the app on your Android device running the older version of Jelly Bean, but can’t bear to wait until 4.2 officially comes to you, this should be music to your ears: the new 4.2 camera/gallery upgrades and Photo Sphere have been successfully ported to Android 4.1.1.

The hack comes courtesy of Android Central forum member dmmarck, who got the new features working on his Galaxy Nexus running 4.1.1.

You’ll need a bit of tech-savvy to get the features working on your own device. After downloading the .apk file provided by dmmarck (forum registration required), you’ll need to move it to your system/app folder using a file explorer, set the file permissions to RW-R-R, and then reboot your device. That’s it.

If you run into problems with Photo Sphere, you may need to do a couple more steps as well.

From the feedback provided by other forum members, it seems that many people are having success with the hack and are enjoying the new features.

Jelly Bean 4.2 Camera [AndroidCentral via Engadget]

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