It is a very well known truth that the stock camera app in Android is terrible, and even the third-party apps in the Play Store are nothing to boast about. It is only the camera app bundled by the OEMs that not only offer a plethora of features, but are also usable. 

When you flash a custom ROM like CyanogenMod on your Android device, the first app that you have to bid goodbye to is the OEM camera app. While the CyanogenMod camera app offers some additional features like JPEG image compressions, and scene mode etc. but it still falls behind OEM camera apps. To keep up with the advanced camera features that users expect in smartphones nowadays, the CyanogenMod team is working on a brand new camera app – Focal.

Remember the Nemesis teaser from the CyanogenMod team? Well, as it turns out Focal is Nemesis, a camera app with advanced features . However, that’s not it. The CM team plans on rolling out major user experience changes to some of the stock Android apps under Nemesis.

Focial has a completely revamped UI, with the UI inspired from the swipe up Google Now shortcut in Nexus devices. It has a plethora of features including burst mode for photos, improved HDR mode, photos while recoding videos, the ability to control the shutter speed, exposure, contrast, ISO levels and much more. In fact, the CyanogenMod team even implemented an open-source version of PhotoSphere, known as PicSphere.

Focal will be tightly integrated with the CyanogenMod ROM. For example, a CM device maintainer can enable burst mode in Focal if the device hardware supports it. Other such examples include HDR video that is only available on certain devices like the Sony Xperia Z and the HTC One.

Focal should be available in nightly builds for various devices from next week, with a stable version for individual devices following it.

Via – Geek