How To: Google's New Photo Sphere in Android Jelly Bean 4.2 Makes Panoramic Photos Bigger and Better

With some Samsung Galaxy S III owners still waiting for the Android Jelly Bean 4.1 update to hit their device, Google has wasted no time in releasing information on their next operating system update—Android Jelly Bean 4.2, which will come stock with the newer Nexus 7 and 10 tablets, and the all-new Nexus 4 smartphone.

While the two Android updates are fairly similar, one of the big features in Jelly Bean 4.2 that sets the two apart is the new camera application, which has a feature called Photo Sphere.

Just like with panoramic photo mode, the camera guides you to where you need to go to stitch the entire picture up seamlessly. What separates this feature from panoramic photo mode is that you can guide the camera to take a picture of an entire view of the plane (higher and lower) instead of just a one-line view of the plane.

This creates a larger picture view, equivalent to that of Google's Street View. From there, you can move up, down, left and right in a 360 degree plane when viewing the picture.

Google has also announced that any user can upload their Photo Sphere pictures to Google Street View, to build a more comprehensive Google Maps. You can look through the map and click on the blue dots to view pictures uploaded by users, like the ones below.

Expect for Jelly Bean 4.2 to be released on November 13, 2012. Whenever it hits your specific device, only time will tell.