Dropbox For iOS Update Enables Full-Resolution Image Downloads, iPhone 5 Support

Dropbox updated its iOS app today to version 1.5.6, which may not seem like a big update if you just rely on the version number, but the popular cloud service introduced a couple of new features in this update, including inevitable iPhone 5 support and the ability to download photos to your camera roll at full resolution.

Previously, the Dropbox iOS app downscaled photos when it would save them to the iDevice's camera roll. So, if you had a high-resolution image that was a few-thousand pixels by a couple-thousand pixels, Dropbox would resize it to 960 pixels wide when viewing it on your iOS device. Obviously, this was to cut down on loading times.

Viewing the downsized photos wasn't particularly aggravating, even on a Retina display, but zooming in on photos to see details wasn't going to happen since they were now low-resolution. It made the appeal of using Dropbox as a photo storage tool not so great, which was a shame because Dropbox would make a good photo storage tool.

However, there are still some caveats that Dropbox left in. The photos still get decompressed in size. They maintain their resolution, but other things like colors and sharpness will lose some detail. Plus, since the photos don't get downsized as much as before, downloading photos to your camera roll can take a while, so if you prefer speed over detail, you might be disappointed in this latest update.

Dropbox is a free download and the update is available now in the iTunes App Store.