Camera performance is a hot-button subject for smartphones this year, and we’re seeing an industry-wide push towards really upping the image quality and overall flexibility of these cameras – that’s led to things like smartphones with cameras that can shoot underwater or those optically stabilized for exceptional low-light performance. We’ve been expecting Apple to upgrade the iPhone 5’s 8-megapixel sensor to a 13-megapixel component for the iPhone 5S, but today a new rumor also looks to what sort of special features might arrive alongside that higher-res sensor, and suggests that slow-motion video recording could be one of them.

There’s reportedly code in the iOS 7 betas that have been thus far released which points to a so-called “Mogul” camera mode that would allow for shooting video with a frame rate as high as 120 fps. At that speed, playback at a more traditional framerate will result in the appearance of smooth, slow-mo video.

While this wouldn’t really be any kind of a coup – other smartphones like the Galaxy S 4 or HTC One are already pulling off tricks like this of their own – Apple’s flair for presentation might just be able to breathe a little new life into the feature. Maybe more than anything, slow-mo video can just look “cool,” and Apple really needs to take some new steps to get users more excited about its hardware – this could be just the trick.

Source: 9to5 Mac