GPS camera hints in iPhone SDK

Cleve Nettles
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May 11, 2008
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While by no means conclusive evidence of GPS capabilities in the iPhone camera software, the latest builds of the SDK are littered with GPS references.  Whether these are just templates (you can see other camera manufactures included as well) or needed by the 3G iPhone camera software is unknown. 

GPS camera software is used to put location (landmark) metadata into the photo files.  Applications like Flickr, and Google earth use this data to arrange photographs (and videos) spatially based on this information.  For instance, if you snapped a picture in Paris, you could later organize you pictures - perhaps in iPhoto? - by Country/city.  Cool!

We'll leave the speculation to you.  More screengrabs below.    One month to go...

 

Comments (8)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 11, 2008 - 8:47am

Oh sweet. This is gonna be excellent! Bring the iPhone!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 11, 2008 - 12:06pm

While this proves that there COULD be GPS in the iPhone, it doesn't mean that there WILL be GPS.

I am not sure I really want it. The battery drain plus the time it takes to triangulate suck - and the Cell tower triangulation works great almost all of the time.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 11, 2008 - 11:00pm

That would be great. I'm sure the cell tower triangulation works great for those of you in larger cities but for the rest of us.... We could be somewhere in a 5 mile radius.... Not too much help... GPS please come to my iPhone!!!!!

KDarling (not verified) | May 12, 2008 - 4:38am

There is no cell triangulation in the iPhone. There is for WiFi hotspots, but if those aren't found, it reverts to showing the location of the tower you're using.

If the new model has GPS, it's most likely to be a version of eGPS, which is low power, fast, and falls back on tower data (but within 30 feet) if inside buildings.

I'd Tap That..iPhone (not verified) | May 30, 2008 - 4:02pm

The iPhone does have cell tower triangulation, which is why it can be (mostly) accurate than when away from WiFi.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 12, 2008 - 4:42am

If you look at the list though in the second screenshot, they are all image formats or image data, it's probably some native image format for some device or another...

locr (not verified) | May 14, 2008 - 2:26am

GPS is part of the Exif format for a very long time so unfortunately this definitely isn't a strong evidence.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 31, 2008 - 9:29pm

GPS units do not use that much power

U can buy a watch with an inbuilt GPS unit and I cant see such an item if you were having to change the battery every week or 2

The one I was shown was reasonably accurate and quick in obtaining positional location