The HTC One is really hot right now, everyone is talking about it, either the original Sense version or the new Google Play edition with vanilla Android. It might not be as big a seller as the Samsung Galaxy S4, but it certainly made its way into people’s mind in the battle for top phone of the year.
Lots of people love many features HTC added to Sense 5, specially in the camera department with Highlights and Zoes but they also prefer the stock Android experience that Google and Matias Duarte designed in the first place. Until now, users had to make a choice, keep Sense with its pros and cons or go full stock and lose some of those features while gaining in the overall experience. Thanks to Paul O’Brien, creator of the MoDaCo custom ROM, there’s now a light at the end of the tunnel for those HTC One users. He’s working on a project called MoDaCo.Switch which is a tool for users to switch between Sense and stock Android on the fly, with a single press of a button.
O’Brien took it to Twitter for the reveal:
MoDaCo.SWITCH is cool, the ideal solution is of course ‘Best of Both’ (BoB) where you can choose which bits of each… in progress. Complex!
When O’Brien finishes with his Switch tool, users will be able to enjoy a stock Android experience on the HTC One, without giving up features like the IR Blaster, Zoes, Highligths or even BlinkFeed. Best of both world indeed!
No more details have been given about Switch, we don’t know exactly how it works, how advanced its development is, or if it’s a feature by feature switch or you just have a dual-boot style experience. I think the former makes more sense and that’s probably what he’s aiming for, but we’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.
O’Brien said that he’s currently just working with the HTC One, but a Samsung Galaxy S4 version of Switch is not ruled out so we might see GS4 users going from TouchWiz to stock Android in the future as well.
We’ll let you know when we have more information about the app.