I haven't tried using OpenCV specifically, but I do dev for the iPhone and can say that most libraries I've tried that work on OS X DO NOT work on the iPhone out of the box. Some of them just needed a little tweaking/configuration to be done and then it was fine on the iPhone, but the reality is that the phone is missing quite a few backend components that OS X supports. Most complex libraries (OpenCV sounds like one of them) aren't going to work without a major effort - particularly since OpenCV sounds like it depends on several other external libraries as well...so those would have to be ported too.
Note that OpenCV runs very fast on Intel chips but the iPhone is arm. Of course OpenCV is extremely useful but it won't be that fast. Also, there's no way to get a live video stream on the iPhone so all of the normal potential CV applications sort of lose their appeal, don't they?
Here's modified script (based on the one from LambdaJive) that builds universal OpenCV framework for iPhone/iPhone Simulator - universal-i386arm opencv framework
iPhone do support OpenCV if you want to use it first go to the best OpenCV on iPhone Documentation on the web: Yoshimasa Niwa's
I used it and i already have an app on the AppStore that uses Face Detection and Image Processing: Flags&Faces if you have any doubts please contact me.
The following post by Yoshimasa does indeed work with I OS and the IPhone 4 and is able to access both the front and back cameras.
The link to the project is using opencv on iphone en
and the sample code is at webgit and it is linked from this article. I really encourage to read the article before getting the source code.
All you need is to generate XCode project for OpenCV project using cmake or cmake gui tool.
Remember to set option to generate XCode project instead of the default option to use CMakeFiles.
Open generated project, change the base SDK to iPhone SDK, and hit build!
Since OpenCV does not support iOS at now (but they has announced iPhone support in version 2.2), highgui library won't compile. So if you need camera access you have to write it yourself.
Anyway, other libraries should compile and work on the device. (Works for me).
OpenCV is now available as a framework for iOS. Just drag and drop into your project. It supports video capture too. See the article and get the example project here: opencv framework for ios
For the sake of transparency, I wrote this article and it is hosted on my company's website.