The folks over there working on CyanogenMod have been very busy leading up to the Android 4.3 announcement. For a while there they were announcing and releasing so many new features, I thought they got bored waiting on the update. Not too long ago, CyanogenMod teased project Nemesis with a short video, which they later unveiled a part of it which is focal. It’s a new camera app for CyanogenMod, that looks a bit like the stock camera app but it’s much more functional.
The team has now released the new camera apk over on XDA so you can download it onto your phone. It does appear to work on any phone whether it’s running CyanogenMod or not. Of course, it’ll probably work better on CyanogenMod-based devices than Touchwiz, or Sense based devices. You install it just like any other apk. So make sure you have ‘Unknown Sources’ checked before attempting to install. You can grab the download here.
The new camera app looks really nice and spiffy. Almost makes me wish the CM guys worked at Google. Much like Apple takes a number of features from the jailbreak community, Google has taken a number of features from the custom ROM community and even the OEM skins. Like quick settings that was introduced in Android 4.2. That was pretty much the same as the toggles you see in Touchwiz and LG’s skin. You also used to see them in older versions of Sense on HTC devices. So I’m sure this Focal camera will get integrated into AOSP in a future release, or maybe Google has something bigger up their sleeves.
Either way, if you’re looking to check out the new camera app, feel free to head over to XDA, where there are tons of questions and plenty of people there to answer those questions. If you do decide to run the camera app on your phone, be sure to let us know in the comments below how it works out for you.