New Google Camera including Photosphere available now
A new version of the Google camera app, presumably for Android 4.3, has been obtained, modified, and released – and it appears to work on most unrooted 4.1 and 4.2 devices.
The biggest difference in the camera that I can tell is that Photosphere is available now – that’s a camera mode similar to panorama mode that allows for taking a complete dome of pictures and stitching them together. It seems to be an improvement over the 4.2 cameras I’ve played with, and performs perhaps a little smoother.
While it’s been a bit since I’ve played with an AOSP camera extensively, some additional changes are two-finger zooming, Photosphere, swiping the display to move to the gallery while still leaving the camera active, and the ability to hold your finger and slide for various options such as exposure, flash, shutter speed, etc.
I did not see burst mode as one of the options, which I’ve found works absurdly well in conjunction with the Google+ auto-awesome photo animation, so I’m not sure if it’s not part of the next camera or just not part of this leaked version, but whatever the case it’s missed by me at least.
The new camera is available in both APK and flashable versions. While my system did not require being unlocked or rooted to install this, your experience may be different depending on your ROM or device. If you’ve got the options to do so, go ahead and make a nandroid backup of your device just in case this pre-release software does anything wonky. However, If you install the APK, all you should need to do to revert back to normal camera is remove the application.
Give it a try and let us know how it works (or doesn’t) for you!
[xda-developers]
