HTC is taking advantage of having many of its Sense apps in Google Play by updating a couple of its important apps.

HTC Lock Screen and HTC Sense Home are now receiving some nice little updates. The HTC Lock Screen app is gaining mealtime recommendations and Yelp reviews, full-screen album artwork, and more, while the HTC Sense Home update adds an improved versions of the Sense Home widget and the Themes app. The full changelogs for both updates are:

HTC Lock Screen

• Mealtime recommendations, Yelp reviews and BlinkFeed content
• Android 5.0 Lollipop-style notifications
• Full-screen album artwork during music playback
• Local weather, sunrise and sunset times and other relevant daily information
• Travel weather clock: check the time in your home town while on-the-go

HTC Sense Home

• Improved Sense Home widget
• Improved Themes app
• Bug fixes and performance improvements

We’ve seen quite a few Android manufacturers push their custom apps to Google Play lately, a move that allows them to provide updates and new features to their users without having to send big software updates out over the air. These HTC app updates are a prime example of that strategy working, and hopefully manufacturers continue to follow the trend in the future.