Who Knew? iPhone Has a Secret Panoramic Photo Function

Originally posted on Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz. 

The iPhone camera has a secret Easter Egg: a panorama mode. This special mode—which Apple has not enabled for consumers yet—will allow you to capture large panoramic scene using multiple photos. This is how you can enable it:

1. First, you should access the com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist in the iPhone (you need to have developer access to do this). The exact location of that plist is:

/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobileslideshow.plist

2. Then, add the line value of EnableFirebreak=Yes.

3. Done. A Panorama button will now appear when you click on Options, displaying a special interface to capture photos in succession, matching them to create the panoramic photo.

Why didn't Apple enable this mode for consumers? Perhaps because it feels a bit cumbersome for now. I'm sure that, if they wanted to enable a panorama capture mode, they would do it in a more elegant, simpler way. After all, there are applications in the App Store that already perform this kind of function in a much elegant way.

Update: Talking to Conrad Kramer, the person who discovered the secret mode, he told us there will be a program to enable this in jailbroken iPhones without any text editing:

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.

This works for iOS 5 only.