If your Android device of choice is the HTC One M8 and you use the Dot View Case, you’re in for a surprise tonight: HTC have included a couple of nifty Halloween themes in the shame of a skeleton and bats theme, or a pumpkin lantern (jack-o-lantern) theme. It’s great to see HTC following Motorola and Google with thematic and automagic themes pushed to their devices: we’ve already seen Motorola’s custom boot animations.
If you’ve not invested in the Dot View Case, this may be the sort of thing that could whet your appetite about the accessory. The Dot View Case is a soft, flexible plastic accessory case that allows you partial control of the device when it’s in it. The HTC One recognizes that it’s in the case and switches the display to show bright imagery through the holes in the style of 8-bit computers. Our one and only real criticism of the case is that it does not fold back to coincide with the curved design of the rear of the M8, but having used the case I didn’t find that it make too big a difference! The Dot View Case is available in a number of colours to suit your taste and it works by illuminating the screen (at high brightness) to show you notifications and the weather. I admit, it’s cool in a retro-but-funky way. When launched, the Dot View Case was an expensive $50 but the price has dropped since then.
The technology behind HTC’s Dot View Case relies on the HTC Service Pack and Dot View Case applets. Updates are pushed to the device via the Google Play Store, rather than necessitating a software update. It’s great to see HTC adopting the Google Play Store for the smaller updates as this makes life a lot easier for customers and allows much more frequent updates, since carriers won’t have to approve every little change that HTC wish to make. This is also a great – but small – way for HTC to keep a little bit of interest in their flagship model, which has been out for an eternity in Android flagship terms (it’s been out for more than six months now).
