Coming soon: MoDaCo.Switch for HTC One to dual-boot Sense and Google Play Edition ROM

The HTC One is one of two Google Edition phones in the market today, but that’s only available in the US as of now. The rest of the world has to use Sense or a launcher to emulate the stock Android feel. But the braver among them can soon try Paul O'Brien MoDaCo.Switch, an "app" that lets you boot from Sense into stock Android and back.

Obviously, this means the HTC One has to be rooted and bootloader unlocked. But this sort of dual-boot implementation is not new to Android phones. What is new, though, is that Switch uses the same set of data and applications for both flavours of Android. So you will get the same apps on the Sense version as well as the stock Android version, without having to back them up and restore them every time when switching. Here’s a look  at how it works.

More from News Analysis

Switch resides like any other app in your app drawer, but when tapped, it gives you two options. Stock  (HTC Sense, in this case) or Google Play edition (AOSP). Select the option you want and the phone will reboot into that version.

When it is released to the public, MoDaCo.Switch can be installed via Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) or ClockworkMod Recovery (CWM), two of the most popular recoveries in the usual way. Sense is based on the 2.24 European HTC One ROM (which is also Android 4.2.2), while stock Android is obviously the Google Play edition ROM.