Apple's iOS 5 is just chock full of surprises these days. Hackers have discovered a panoramic camera mode hidden in the OS. There is a fairly quick way to activate it, assuming that you are comfortable editing a configuration file with a text editor. Once enabled, the panoramic mode allows the user to take multiple pictures in quick succession and join them into one mega picture.
The hidden panorama mode in iOS 5 was discovered by Conrad Kramer who tweeted about it late Monday night. Getting the toggle button for the panorama mode to show up in the camera settings for your device appears to be simple enough.
First, you need to access the com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist in your iPhone 4 or 4S. The full path to that file is /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist. You'll need to have developer access to the device to get to it. Next, add a line in that file that simply says EnableFirebreak=Yes. That's it. A Panorama button will then appear in the options menu for the iPhone camera, allowing the user to take pictures in succession and stitch them together to form a extra wide panoramic image.
The biggest question is why wasn't this mode available to users yet? It's possible Apple wanted to apply more polish to this option before making it available to the public.
Kramer told Gizmodo that an app was in the works that will allow users with jailbroken phones to enable this mode without editing any files.
"A tweak will be out on Cydia tomorrow to enable it, iPhone 4 and newer, due to the inclusion of a gyroscope in the iPhone 4."
It's nice to see that this wasn't just another problem with iOS 5, like the battery life issues or the recent discovery of a huge security flaw allowing apps to download and install malicious code. Hopefully Apple will put some polish on this and enable it for everyone in a future update.
