Android 4.3 includes major Photo Sphere enhancements, app permission manager & cool easter egg

Yesterday, Google finally announced Android 4.3, a minor update to 4.2 that included a handful of neat features, including the ability to have more than one user profile. As time has progressed, however, a few other unannounced features have been discovered.

First, Googler Evan Rapoport posted a detailed description on Google+ about the serious enhancements the Photo Sphere team made to the functionality in Android 4.3. Rapoport says that nearly all of stitching and exposure bugs and annoyances present in Android 4.2 have been fixed in the latest update.

First, alignment and stitching are much better, giving you more level horizons and fewer errors throughout the image. While environments with lots of moving things are always challenging, scenes like the one attached here with a long flat horizon are now much better.

Second, we’ve improved exposure compensation for each individual frame, producing a beautifully exposed photo sphere. You can compare this to the previous versions that produced gray areas and inconsistent coloring in areas of high contrast (near the sun, horizons, buildings against blue sky, etc.).

Second, Android Police has discovered a new App Ops service in Android 4.3 that lets you control the permissions that individual apps are granted. When activated (it’s hidden by default for now), a new settings menu will appear that is broken down into “location,” “personal,” “messaging,” and “device.” From there, you can tap one of those tabs to see the apps able to access that feature. For example, you could set it so that Facebook could not have access to your location data.

Third, a cool easter egg in the form of the Konami Code.

In the Google Play Games app, simply swipe the following directions: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right. The app will then provide you with a button popup to finish up the code with B, A, Start.

As time progresses, we will surely see more Android 4.3 features be discovered, especially when the new Nexus 7 makes it into the hands of consumers.