Last weekend, the CyanogenMod team announced its phase 1 of the Nemesis project – Focal – a brand new camera app with great emphasis on features and usability. With project Nemesis, the CM team aims to improve certain aspects of stock Android, where they think the OS is terribly lagging. 

It was just a matter of time before Focal started showing up in CM10.1/2 nightlies. Now, beginning from last night, the Focal camera app has been merged into CM10.2 repos and will be available in all nightly builds for supported devices. However, you don’t need to flash CM10.2 to try out Focal on your Android device.

You can download the APK from here, and then manually install it on your Android device to give Focal a try. Just make sure you have enabled installation of APKs from Unknown Sources from Settings -> Security. For me, the app worked fine on a Nexus 4 running an Android 4.2.2 based ROM, a Galaxy Note 2 running Android 4.1.2 and an HTC One running Android 4.2.2.

If you are not aware of how to install the APK, follow the steps below.

1. Download the APK from here directly on your device, or download it to your PC and then transfer it to your Android device.

2. Using a file explorer like Sold Explorer or Astro File Manager, navigate to the directory where you downloaded or transferred the file to.

3. Tap the Install button to continue installing Focal on your Android device.

Once the APK has been installed, you can fire up Focal from your app drawer.

Considering the lack of decent third-party Camera apps on the Play Store and how terrible the AOSP camera app is, Focal truly comes as a refresher. The widget based UI is fully customizable, and there are plethora of options to play around with including an open-sourced alternative of PhotoSphere – PicSphere. If you are not happy with the Camera app of your Android device, definitely give Focal a try.