MoDaCo Brings Our Android Dreams To Life With Switch!
Almost as soon as Android was born, so were OEM UI’s or skins. These customer UI’s changed up the look of Android and sometimes even added/remove functionality to/from the phone. Since that time debates have gone on and on as to whether or not these skins were better or worse than pure Android. Android purists, of course love the stock Android look and feel while your average consumer probably has never seen Android the way it was designed to be.
For a long time, we had no choice when it came to OEM skins. Basically everyone phone, with the exception of the Nexus device, came preloaded with some sort of OEM skin. Again, some found the skins useful, others hated them. For those who didn’t like them, there was often the option to get stock Android onto the device courtesy of Android’s amazing developer community. As great as this option often was and still is, many still yearn for the option straight from the manufacturer. Out of that yearning though came the Google Edition phones. Currently only the HTC One and Galaxy S4 have these Google Edition phones, which come preloaded with stock Android, however many other OEMs are likely to jump on board.
While the Goole Edition phones are a great option for people, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have the option to switch back and forth between the OEM UI and stock Android at a click of a button? Many have hoped for this kind of functionality for a long time (myself included) and now MoDaCo’s Paul O’Brien is bringing it to life. In the video below you’ll see an HTC One showing off this cool Switch functionality. With a couple of clicks, the HTC One can reboot with either Sense 5 or stock Android running the show.
Now having multiple ROMs on a single device has been capable in the past but generally your user data would never transfer between the ROMs. Everything you did on one ROM was attached to that ROM and what you did on the other ROM was likewise stuck to that ROM. However, with O’Brien’s solution, your user data is the same for both Sense 5 and stock Android. He shows this off in the video below as he installs an app on one side, reboots into the other side, and has that same app newly added.
While the Switch does require a reboot of the phone to switch things up, O’Brien is hopeful that he’ll be able to remove the reboot from the sequence and make the whole process super quick. He has also stated that he may work on an option for the Galaxy S4 down the road as well if he can get this thing perfected.
In the perfect Android world, Google would grab Mr. O’Brien and use his genius to somehow build this functionality straight into the Android code but that’s probably never going to happen. A man can dream though….
Check out the video below!