To jailbreak or not to jailbreak?

During my quest to get the best out of my iPhoneography experience I scoured the App Store and web looking for the best available applications. Whilst the App Store has a wide range of photo editors and other apps to enhance the iPhone's camera features, Apple has not opened up all of the camera's framework to developers, and so there are some apps that are not available to us with non jailbroken iPhones.

The two most notable apps that clearly demonstrate what the iPhone and its camera are capable of are Snapture and Camera PRO.

Snapture

Snapture (Website Link) priced at $7.99 is by far the most feature rich app, offer the following enhancements over Apple's built-in camera/photo apps.

• Click on the thumbnail stack to spread them out. You can view thumbnails of your last 4 pictures.
• Press and hold any one of the thumbnails to get a fullscreen view.
• Slide a thumbnail horizontally across the screen to email or delete the picture.
• Show red color accent on your image.
• Show blue color accent on your image.
• Show green accent on your image.
• Tap anywhere on the screen, or use the volume button to take a picture!
• Click the Snapture logo to set up Snapture as the Home Button Double-Click app.
• Tag the current location automatically on each captured image.
• Take pictures in 4 color modes: full color, grayscale, sepia and negative.
• Take 3 quick consecutive pictures with one press. Great for action shots.
• Delays your shot by 2, 5, or 10 seconds. Great for self photos.
• Places a 360-degree leveler on the screen so you can align pictures at the proper angle.
• Zoom in and out by pinching the screen with your fingers. Allows you to zoom in by up to 3X.
• Turn image rotation based on the iPhone's accelerometer on or off. When Auto-Rotation is off, you can take photos upside down.
• Take photos in 3 different sizes: Large (1600x1200), Medium (1280x960) and Small (960x720).
• Place your finger on the screen and hold until a circle appears around it. From here, remove your finger within the circle to take a picture, or slide off the circle to cancel.
• Take photos without disturbing anyone by turning off audible feedback.

Whilst preparing this article I contacted SnaptureLabs the developer of Snapture to see if the app had or was planned to be submitted to Apple for approval and subsequently for sale via the App Store, and this was the reply I got.

"Thanks for your interest in Snapture! Unfortunately Apple still has not opened up the necessary camera frameworks for us to port our app to the App Store. We're hoping they open them up at some point, but for now we're happy serving our loyal jailbroken users!"

Camera PRO

Camera PRO (Website Link) at the slightly higher price of $9.95 promises to give your iPhone professional camera features, allowing you to take pictures of yourself with the timer, digitally zoom in on people and objects, as well as the following features:

• Self-Timer (on/off)
• Burst Mode (on/off)
• Digital Zoom (up to 20 x magnification)
• Black & White (color filter)
• Set Image Size (1600x1200, 800x600, 640x480, 320x240)
• Leveler (display motion sensor info)
• Auto-horizon (photo always leveled)
• Silent Shutter (shutter sound off)

As with Snapture I contacted Makayama, the developer of CameraPro and got the following reply.

"CameraPro has been submitted to Apple more than 2 month ago. They've let us know that it needs to undergo further technical review. We have no idea when and if they approve. So in the best case scenario it will be live this week, in the worst case it may never see the daylight in the App Store."

The fact that Apple have not rejected Camera PRO at the first review may be a good sign, but who knows.

Whilst some of these features can be found in the App Store, it would be nice to see all of them available in a single approved app, as with these apps it clearly shows what can be achieved by developers if only Apple would allow it. Whilst I am not a fan of jailbreaking iPhone's, it is apps like this that make jailbreaking a tempting proposition, so my question is, should I jailbreak or not?

Also if you have jail broken your iPhone and are using either or both of these apps, then please let me know your thoughts in the comments.