Google’s Photo Sphere has been one of the glowing capabilities of Android phones since its release just over a year ago, but the reign of exclusivity is now over for the Android faithful. As of earlier today, Google has officially brought its Photo Sphere capabilities to iOS though the Photo Sphere Camera app.
Here's some good news for the smartphone photographers out there who are sick of all the iPhone-only news that seems to flow down the pipeline daily. It turns out that anybody with an Android 4.0 and later phone can install a copy of the superior Android 4.3 camera app without even having to root their phone.
Late last year, Google one-upped Apple's iOS 6 Panorama feature by bringing a special street view-style panorama app called "Photo Sphere" to Android 4.2. With the app, users can create 360-degree panoramas that can be viewed as both flat images and explorable street-view "spheres."
The only real pitfall was the fact that you were extremely limited when it came to viewing them as "spheres," the way there were meant to be viewed. Unless you were viewing the photo on the device you took it on, Google+ or Google Maps, you were given a standard, flat panorama. Well, we can now consider that problem solved thanks to Google's new Photo Sphere Widget.
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.
Apple may have launched a neat panorama feature with iOS 6, but Google is one-upping the Cupertino-based company today with its new Jelly Bean flavor: Android 4.2. The OS now comes with an official 360-degree panorama app called Photo Sphere.