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There’s no question HTC’s software team is a talented group of folks, creating not only one of the most beautifully designed skins for their Android devices, but some of the most useful apps and services as well. As it turns out, a successful future in mobile hardware is only one area the company is gunning for, with the logical move to software being the other.
Kick off the manufacturer’s new interest and creating apps and services for everyone — not just their devices — is HTC Creative Labs, the company’s new software business unit. Headed by Drew Bamford, the 260 man group will open up availability of Zoe to rival Android devices in the Play Store later this week. For those unfamiliar with HTC devices, Zoe is HTC’s custom built video app that captures a short burst of video and images at the same time. This images and videos can later be compiled into a more lengthy 30 second video, complete with a soundtrack and theme to go along with it.
But Zoe isn’t only a tool for creating unique content, it’s also a social hub of sorts where others can help contribute to your videos by adding their own media. It sounds rather complicated, but we’re HTC is planning on making things as user friendly as possible. Because Zoe will launch in beta, expect only a few high-end handsets to be compatible with the app.
It also appears that Zoe is only the beginning. HTC told Re/code they’re have other software projects in the making, but was mum on any sort of details. With HTC’s exclusive software being one of the main selling points to their hardware, it will be interesting to see how this new move plays out. As the underdog in our current smartphone market, it’s definitely nice to see someone making taking risks like this.
We’ll keep you updated on Zoe when it officially launches in the Google Play Store later this week.
YES!! Now I can migrate to stock Android and have even more mods with all the original HTC stuff!! Lovely!!
Props to HTC. Their skin is currently the ONLY non-stock Skin I’d consider using. They try to seek solutions to problems, rather than Samsung’s approach of adding features in search of a problem.
Running BLINKFEED on the 1+1 & OPPO FIND 7,w/only location/weather inop,the rest of it works well.
Would welcome a fully functional stand-alone BLINKFEED,w/the option to use it on it’s own with another launcher.
It’ll be nice when I can finally use it
Nice! Hope the G3 is supported!
In other words they’re doing what Samsung does with their S-Apps.
All I want is blinkfeed!
Flipboard is the same thing.
Not as good
Considering you can’t make custom feeds, probably better.
Not really.
Seeing OEMs move their apps to Google Play like Motorola and HTC have, even if they remain exclusive to said OEMs’ devices makes me hopeful for the future of Android. With Android L’s feature of automatically preloading specified apps from Google Play on first start up, what’s keeping Android OEMs from shipping stock or nearly stock Android on their devices and having their custom apps preloaded on boot up? With this feature, OEMs can have their cake and eat it too by still shoving their proprietary software down our throats while at the same time not impeding the progress of Android.
would be nice if it wasnt just “Coming Soon” on my HTC One M8
^ Yes.
Not supported for all of my devices lol
G3, One X, LG Tab 8.3
It will be soon. Official release is this week.
Still can’t install it on my HTC EVO 4G LTE… jerks