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iPhone 4 Photo's & Video Rotating Sideways In Email

When I take photo's & video's holding my iPhone 4 straight up and down (portrait mode), the iPhone 4 rotates photo's and video's sideways when emailed from iPhone to another person's email address. Has anyone else had this problem? The photo's & video's look perfect when viewing on the iPhone but turn out sideways when emailed.

I called Apple support about this and they said it was likely a software problem, but said not enough compliants have come in to push a priority fix for it. They said a future iOS update may fix the problem.

I spent $299 for my phone and I want this fixed. What recourse do I have? I've had the phone for about 6 weeks. Any advice?

iPhone 4, iOS 4, updated to iOS 4.0.1

Posted on Aug 12, 2010 7:44 AM

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75 replies

Dec 23, 2010 5:38 AM in response to TennisGuy007

I think I have the answer to why this rotation problem occurs. The Iphone 4 that I have establishes the orientation of the movie when you push the record button. If you push it with the camera in the wrong orientation, then the whole movie will be taken in the orientation that was established WHEN THE RECORD BUTTON WAS PUSHED. The answer I found is that you hold the camera in the orientation you want AS YOU PUSH THE RECORD BUTTON. You do not notice this problem while you take the movie, it is only apparent when you play it back.

Dec 30, 2010 10:02 AM in response to TennisGuy007

I use iPhone 3gs, with OS 4.0.2, and have the same problem.

MMS messages have the correct orientation, but when photos taken in portrait mode are sent in emails, they arrive rotated to landscape mode.

There is no way to correct for this in code, because you can not guess the user's original intentions.

Apple: this is clearly a great oversight on your part, please elevate the priority on this problem.

Jan 7, 2011 10:34 AM in response to Tom Alperin

Sorry, I guess I read your question too quickly. As you suspect, the iPhone uses the orientation flag, which Quicktime recognizes. That's why it works in Quicktime. There are still a lot of applications that don't recognize the orientation flag though, which is why you get the rotation. Those applications usually default to landscape mode in a particular direction, which tends to be landscape with the camera position in the upper left.

The only real options at this point is to either always take photos or videos with the camera in the upper left while holding in landscape, or by setting the orientation explicitly by doing a rotate and resaving the image/video. The other option would be for all programs to utilize the orientation flag, but I'm sure it'll be a while before that happens.

Mar 19, 2011 9:28 AM in response to TennisGuy007

I have the same issue. I went on a vacation and took many photos with my iPhone running iOS 4.0. When I emailed them to my family and friends, orientation was wrong in several of them -- basically whenever I physically rotated the phone away from its standard orientation, the orientation is wrong. The thumbnails in gmail are correct, but when the image is opened in gmail (even on a Mac), the images are rotated (or even upside down).

This is very annoying.

Like several people wrote, the reason for this is that Apple is now no longer physically rotating the pixels (since iOS 4.0), but instead uses an orientation tag. The actual pixels under iOS 4.0 are in the wrong orientation -- and it is only the orientation tag that can save your viewer from displaying it wrong. Many viewers don't support such a tag, especially under Windows, so the tag gets ignored, and the image displays wrong. The old solution of physically rotating the pixels was actually a lot better!

Apple, consider fixing this. Yes, it may take swallowing your pride and reverting back to the old pre-iOS 4.0 way (which worked perfectly!), but sometimes, this is exactly what it takes.

I took beautiful photos and I am now frustrated that my friends and family cannot view them properly. There is no easy workaround -- half of the pictures I already took are in a wrong orientation and can't be fixed easily. For future images, basically I am stuck with remembering to take pictures in landscape. It is annoying to have such a constraint, on a phone equipped with accelerometers and boasting its smart orientation capabilities..

Oct 24, 2011 6:57 PM in response to rslygh

Same issue here with the few iPhones 4s we have. Any playback on a Windows PC is sideways, unless you're using Quicktime, which will play it in the correct orientation. The only workarounds I've found is either using Quicktime, or using Windows Live Movie Maker to rotate the video. The problem with Movie Maker is that you have to save it as a wmv after you've rotated it.


Yay, Thank you rslygh! Just read your post, tried it and it worked for me in Quicktime. At least I can see my videos now without trying to sit sideways. Thanks Mate.

Oct 28, 2011 8:03 PM in response to TennisGuy007

Only after I downloaded the new i05 software, and sync my iphone 4... what happens is that my photos (1,000's) that that I snapped in portrait mode are all rotated 90 degrees. The pictures are not rotated like this on my laptop that I sync with..

I understand that I can rotate on my iphone... but this would be one at a time (too slow.. can't do this with 1,000's of photos) AND then tthe revised photo goes into your camera roll instead of making the change in the original album.

Anyone have a solution? I called Apple support and they don't know why this is happening. The apple advisor I spoke to says he hasn't heard of this problem. I did a sync again.. hoping this would clear it up. Didn't work...


these rotated pictures also are annoying when you stream to apple tv...

iPhone 4 Photo's & Video Rotating Sideways In Email

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