Future of Android ROMs

[the DRIZZLE]

I've had an OG Droid since launch day, and I've been running Cyanogen on it for the last six months or so, and lots of leaked Motorola builds before that. But looking at a lot of the newer phones, it there don't seem to be a lot of third party ROMs available. The Droid 2 and Droid X have Fission, but they can only do much with a locked bootloader. I've heard there are some ROMs for the Galaxy S phones on XDA, but it looks like Cyanogen development for Galaxy S has been abandoned.

Anyone want to speculate on the future of third party ROMs for Android? It's really nice knowing that you always have a backup if the manufacturer is slow to push out updates or stops supporting your phone at all. I hope I'm wrong but it seems like the with manufacturers locking phones down more and more, combined with the relatively short life cycles of the phones is killing third party ROMs. Thoughts?

 

[PhoKingGuy]

The G2 was rooted like last week and theres already like 3 ROMs for it, buy a phone from a good manufacturer and there will be plenty of them.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

The G2 was rooted like last week and theres already like 3 ROMs for it, buy a phone from a good manufacturer and there will be plenty of them.

Fair point, but even that took longer than expected because people were losing root on reboot. The G2 is also a "developer phone" so its supposed to be easy and they still made the community jump through a bunch of extra hoops.

 

[Bateluer]

Fair point, but even that took longer than expected because people were losing root on reboot. The G2 is also a "developer phone" so its supposed to be easy and they still made the community jump through a bunch of extra hoops.

So far as I know, CM work on the Galaxy S phones is still going forward. Slowly. By the time they finish it, the Galaxy S will be completely obsolete. Realistically, with all the problems of the Galaxy S phones and Samsung's nonexistent support, no one should purchase a Samsung phone at all.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

So far as I know, CM work on the Galaxy S phones is still going forward. Slowly. By the time they finish it, the Galaxy S will be completely obsolete. Realistically, with all the problems of the Galaxy S phones and Samsung's nonexistent support, no one should purchase a Samsung phone at all.

Thats part of my point. The phones are only on the market for 6-9 months. By the time they start making progress on ROMs the phones are on their way out. Getting back to what PhokinGuy said about manufacturers. If Moto locks down their phones, and Samsung is buggy crap, that only really leaves HTC.

 

[Bateluer]

Thats part of my point. The phones are only on the market for 6-9 months. By the time they start making progress on ROMs the phones are on their way out. Getting back to what PhokinGuy said about manufacturers. If Moto locks down their phones, and Samsung is buggy crap, that only really leaves HTC.

LG is kinda the oddball here. They've made some Android phones, but nothing thats really generated much buzz.

 

[vshah]

Fair point, but even that took longer than expected because people were losing root on reboot. The G2 is also a "developer phone" so its supposed to be easy and they still made the community jump through a bunch of extra hoops.

the g2 was by no means a "developer phone"

the dev phones so far have been
adp1/g1
adp2/mytouch 3g
nexus one

and now the nexus S (supposedly it has fastboot oem unlock)

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Ok, I'm a Motorola Milestone user. We got root pretty quickly through vulnerable recovery.

But seriously, there's only so much you can do with root.

THe locked bootloader is not getting cracked anytime soon, so I really wouldn't bet on it. There's a reason why Birdman abandoned Dx and went to the SGS phones. We really didn't get any "ROMs" (actually Nandroid backups) til like summer 2010. And even then they kinda sucked.

Luckily someone took up CM6 in October or soething and started getting us a hacked 2.2 CM6. We don't even have an official 2.2 now so it was first based on the 2.1 kernel with some 2.2 hacks. Now we have a leaked kernel. I'd say it took a WHILE before we got some legit ROMs out the door. But the question is how hard will people work given new phones are coming out left and right? Why spend so much time on a hopeless phone? I'm glad the Milestone guys keep cranking stuff out.

 

[Anonemous]

LG is kinda the oddball here. They've made some Android phones, but nothing thats really generated much buzz.

Well the LG optimus S has 2-3 ROMs out on androidcentral. Tried the Thunder ROM and going to eventually try the OC kernel. Can't believe how easy it was to enable wifi tethering without even rooting the phone. Others are OCing using the OC kernel (Xonia) for the Optimus. Even without OCing, Linpack and Quadrant scores are doubled with the optimizations from these ROMs.

Even rooting was as easy as running an app from the market place.

 

[boomhower]

The EVO was roooted quickly and has a ton of ROM's available.

 

[Bateluer]

Well the LG optimus S has 2-3 ROMs out on androidcentral. Tried the Thunder ROM and going to eventually try the OC kernel. Can't believe how easy it was to enable wifi tethering without even rooting the phone. Others are OCing using the OC kernel (Xonia) for the Optimus. Even without OCing, Linpack and Quadrant scores are doubled with the optimizations from these ROMs.

Even rooting was as easy as running an app from the market place.

Good to know with the Tegra powered Star coming soon. Bodes well.

 

[weeber]

I've got a Captivate (AT&T Galaxy S), and I'm running the Axura CE ROM right now (Froyo). There's several other options at XDA too (Cognition/Perception, Assurance, others). CM would be great, but there's plenty going on to keep me and most others happy. This is my first smartphone, and these guys made tools that makes flashing so easy, it not a problem to try several different ROMs in and evening.

Thanks to the developers, I think the Captivate is a pretty solid phone.

• Froyo
• voice dialing and directions
• improved GPS (not as good as many phones now, but about equal to my old Garmin)
• much faster/more responsive
• overclocking and undervolting capabilities
• better email and wifi

It sucks that it takes the effort of these developers to actually make this into a solid smartphone, and Samsung doesn't provide the proper support, but all-in-all the community for it is pretty strong.

So far as I know, CM work on the Galaxy S phones is still going forward. Slowly. By the time they finish it, the Galaxy S will be completely obsolete. Realistically, with all the problems of the Galaxy S phones and Samsung's nonexistent support, no one should purchase a Samsung phone at all.

 

[vshah]

it tends to depend on which phones the actual devs own. those always see the best support.

 

[s44]

CM would be great

It's not recorded in the mainline progress indicators, but there's a quite functional third beta, plus Captivate kernel.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I wouldnt put any rom that made me lose 4g

 

[YoungGun21]

The only reason the Galaxy S phones don't have a lot of ROMs is because they are still on 2.1. Once 2.2 hits, every major ROM on other phones will be ported over. Once 2.3 hits, many many more new ones will be made. For being on 2.1, there are still about 5-6 mainstream ones to choose from. I find that pretty good.

Also, in regards to other phones, there are TONS of ROMs available for the HTC phones. Evo, Incredible, Desire, etc. all have lots of ROMs and they frequently get ported from one device to the next (Evo ROMs/themes on Inc. for example).

How many ROMs must a phone have to be up to your standards? Like you said, you've been running the same ROM for over six months now...

 

[Bateluer]

I wouldnt put any rom that made me lose 4g

Not everyone lives in a 4G area. For an Evo/Epic user in Phoenix, losing 4G ability on the phone is no big deal because there isn't service yet anyway. Something that needs to be near the top of the priority list though.

As I shop for a new phone though, I pay VERY close attention to XDA and which phones the majority of the developers own. While many of them do own multiple phones, and have phones donated to them, you can tell which get the love and which do not.

 

[gsaldivar]

When Google releases Android with built-in VoIP capabilities, I wouldn't be surprised if most, or all carriers disable this feature. Expect a renewed effort by carriers to employ locks/countermeasures to prevent people from enabling this feature.

VoIP turns a cell phone carrier into what they should be in the first place... a dumb pipe.

 

[YoungGun21]

When Google releases Android with built-in VoIP capabilities, I wouldn't be surprised if most, or all carriers disable this feature. Expect a renewed effort by carriers to employ locks/countermeasures to prevent people from enabling this feature.

VoIP turns a cell phone carrier into what they should be in the first place... a dumb pipe.

Yea like VZW did with Skype (oh it ONLY works on 3G, sorry, here is the program anyway).

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Not everyone lives in a 4G area. For an Evo/Epic user in Phoenix, losing 4G ability on the phone is no big deal because there isn't service yet anyway. Something that needs to be near the top of the priority list though.

As I shop for a new phone though, I pay VERY close attention to XDA and which phones the majority of the developers own. While many of them do own multiple phones, and have phones donated to them, you can tell which get the love and which do not.

All carriers are expanding pretty fast. Sprint didn't have much coverage in my area then all of a sudden I get max 4g bars. 3g speeds on sprint are abysmal.

Anyways why do you need like 50 roms when there are 4 or 5 extremely good ones that are updated frequently in the case of the evo vs the epic.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

My point wasn't really about the number of ROMs. I was commenting more on the trend of the manufacturers locking down phones tighter than they have in the past.

 

[ponyo]

The number of custom roms will only increase in the future. This homebrewing custom mods and roms are becoming lucrative business. Android is growing leaps and bounds and there's piles of money to be made. More people will join in as the money continues to get bigger. I expect bigger and fancier roms and products from everyone involved. Cyanogenmod team reportedly did over a million dollars in donation last year and Kousch of the Clockworkmod earned over $300k in donation just off of that one program. The money will get bigger. It's becoming a big and profitable business and people follow the money.

 

[Bateluer]

The number of custom roms will only increase in the future. This homebrewing custom mods and roms are becoming lucrative business. Android is growing leaps and bounds and there's piles of money to be made. More people will join in as the money continues to get bigger. I expect bigger and fancier roms and products from everyone involved. Cyanogenmod team reportedly did over a million dollars in donation last year and Kousch of the Clockworkmod earned over $300k in donation just off of that one program. The money will get bigger. It's becoming a big and profitable business and people follow the money.

Steve Kondik, Cyanogen, was on some Google dev live streams recently, and will be on again tonight. Details in his tweets.