The popular and famed Android modder Paul O’Brien is cooking up something pretty neat for all you HTC One fans and owners. He’s calling the new feature the MoDaCo Switch, and it will allow users to seamlessly switch from the stock HTC Sense UI software on the One to vanilla Android. Essentially turning your regular HTC One into the Google Play edition.
That isn’t all either. Since this is a switch and all, it works both ways. You’ll be able to instantly switch to the Google Play edition with stock Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean as Google intends, and then switch back to HTC’s Sense UI. The choice is yours.
Paul confirmed the new feature is a work in progress (and not available) over on Twitter, and also posted up the teaser image we have below. Obviously this isn’t an easy task, to essentially dual-boot both OS versions and make them available at the switch of a button. But if anyone can do it, he certainly can. Originally he states this is for the HTC One only, but it sounds like if all goes well we can expect to see a Galaxy S4 switch too.
Of course you’ll be running a MoDaCo ROM on your HTC One, so you’ll need to be rooted and running custom software, but the option he’ll be providing will make it worth it. Paul then goes on to mention his ultimate goal will be bring “Best of Both” or BoB to the HTC One. Allowing users to use parts of both ROMs at the same time. As in HTC Blinkfeed, Beats Audio, the infrared remote and such, all while running the stock Google Play edition software. That would be epic, and truly the best of both worlds.
This is a complex task and probably won’t be done anytime soon, but we could be seeing the initial “Switch” feature show up in the MoDaCo ROM sometime soon. One can hope. We’ll be following the development on this impressive sounding MOD and hack closely, so stay tuned.
SOURCE: @PaulOBrien
Woah! As much as I would like to flash the Google Play Edition software on my One, I can’t leave Zoe, IR and such behind. When this comes out, I’ll be unlocking/rooting/flashing my One in a heartbeat for this!
Same here. Want the newer android os and basic UI, but not ready to let the better pictures and IR go.
WHY CAN’T HTC ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING LIKE THIS SO WE WON’T HAVE TO ROOT OUR DEVICES. If MoDaCo can do this, certainly HTC can, OR they should just hire him to help with this switcharoo or dual boot.
Whoa! This means I can finally buy hardware other than Nexus.. <3