Google's Photo Sphere camera app, which was first released for Android last year and shipped with the Nexus smartphones, has now been made available for the iOS.
The Photo Sphere app allows users to take 360-degree panoramic images of the surroundings. To operate, users stand on location and then hit the shutter button for the camera. After doing so, virtual dots will appear on the screen, located on the environment around the user. Users then move the camera and take more pictures to connect the dots and complete the 360-degree image.
Once all the images have been taken, Photo Sphere will connect all of them automatically into an image that resembles what users see when accessing Google's Street View service.
The completed 360-degree image can be viewed by scrolling around the picture with the user's finger. Once the user is satisfied that the image is exactly how the user sees it, the 360-degree picture can then be uploaded to either Google Maps or Views.
Views, a dedicated community for Photo Sphere images, acts as the user's library for all of the collected pictures, which allows the user to easily share the images to other Views users and other social media networks such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
While the functionality of the app is mostly seen as nothing more than a novelty, it has its fair share of uses. For one, because it shows a comprehensive shot of a location, the details can be assessed those looking for a specific place, such as for photo shoots and vacation trips. In addition, while several images of a location, or even a wide version of a picture using the panorama mode of a camera, is able to remind users of a certain place, looking at a Photo Sphere image of the same place is closer to actually standing on that specific location, for sentimental reasons.
The Photo Sphere Camera app is currently available to download for free on iTunes. The app supports iPhone 4S and above, running on iOS 7.0 or later.
Google has dabbled with photography apps in the past, allowing both amateur and professional photographers to have additional camera capabilities on their smartphones and tablets. Google Camera, released in April, includes the Photo Spheres functionality, along with other tools such as Lens Blur and Panorama. The app also features the 100 percent viewfinder, which allows the camera's sensor to get the maximum resolution for pictures without sacrificing pixels. The app runs on Android 4.4 KitKat.
