Google Photo Sphere on Android 4.2 brings Street View’s panorama technology to smartphones

Yesterday with the launch of the Android 4.2 and the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 devices, Google showed a new Android feature called Photo Sphere. On the face of it,
one might relegate it as a me-too Panorama feature similar to the one seen on the iPhone 5, but Google says that it leverages technology from its Street View service.
According to Google, it is just not a standard Panorama app like the one Apple has for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S, but it is actually an extension of Street View.
Now, Google makes a big deal about its Street View vehicles that gather 3D photographs of cities, but Photo Sphere similarly allows users to add 360-degree panoramas to Google Maps.
Additionally, unlike Apple’s 28-megapixel cap, Google’s Photo Sphere can go way beyond 28-megapixels. Google has not revealed how bigger panorama photos one can take and they are rather ambiguous about it, but we will know when get our hands on it. Notably, unlike most Panorama apps out there, it does not only go sideways but also up and down which helps it to create a true 360-degree image.
The Panorama’s shot using Photo Sphere are stored as JPEGs and all the information regarding the image is stored in the XML metadata. Google has posted a quick demo of the Photo Sphere feature in a demo, which we have embedded below. Take a look it’s pretty impressive.