iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Thursday, May 22, 2008
News Category: iPhone

The latest beta of iPhone Software 2.0 released to a enterprise partners suggests Apple is working on adding geotagging support to the iPhone’s Camera application. Geotagging adds location-specific metadata such as city and state or latitude and longitude coordinates to media files so they can later be processed, sorted, and referenced by location. AppleInsider reports that people familiar with the release, labeled build 5A292g, say location-aware applications such as Maps and Camera now ask for user permission to identify their current position. In addition, a new toggle found in the iPhone’s General Settings menu appears to allow users to enable/disable Location Services on a system-wide basis. Despite the appearance of these new location services, it appears that location metadata is not yet being embedded in new photos taken with the iPhone’s camera; the specific details of what metadata is included may yield clues as to whether the geotagging is based on currently vague iPhone location detection, more precise GPS functionality, or either, depending on the iPhone model.