With formation and acknowledgment of existence of “Cynaogen Inc”, the company behind CyanogenMod, the creator of the touted camera app, which was part of CyanogenMod earlier, has carved separate path distancing himself from the company because of changes in licenses. Focal camera has already been removed from CM ROM. Steve Kodnik, CTO of Cyanogen Inc, said,
“I spoke with Xplod at length about this. I think Focal is a great piece of work with huge potential, but there’s now this perception that CM is trying to steal his hard work and run with it. I would rather see him continue this as a standalone project (which will no doubt be successful) rather than continue to generate drama in the community,”
Xplod is the nickname of Guillaume Lesniak, the creator of Focal camera app. This app is now available for free on Google Play Store. Currently, it is released as beta version.
Even in its beta form, the app provides several features, which may not be available on your old phone. For high end new phones, it serves as one of the best free alternative. Here are some of its features:
- Photo and Video mode supporting burst mode, timer mode, scene mode, etc.
- Shutter speed control on select Sony smartphones.
- Panaroma mode
- Picsphere mode, similar to Google’s Photosphere, for 360° sphere shots
- Auto-awesome for automatic picture enhancement
- HDR, color adjustment, manual light measure points, etc are some of the features available on supported devices.
- High framerate video recording
Since the app is in beta stage, it has its own share of bugs on certain smartphones. We hope that the developer continue working with as much enthusiasm as was when the app was part of CyanogenMod.
Download Focal camera app from Google Play Store here
