CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available [LWN.net]

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 8:20 UTC (Wed) by aorth (subscriber, #55260)
In reply to: CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available by tajyrink
Parent article: CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Re: modding ROMs. There's a quote which always cracks me up:

"XDA has cooks, most of them grill, pan fry, or broil...none of them develop."

Yeah, an OpenWRT-like Android ROM distribution would be cool. CyanogenMod's the closest thing there is in the Android ecosystem. Unfortunately phones aren't like routers; most phones are essentially worthless after ~2 years, and then there's a lot of heavy lifting to do when it comes to porting new Android versions to old devices. By then the vendor has abandoned the device, and the onus is on regular people like you and me to do the porting in their free time.

Many 1- and 2-year-old phones are stuck on 2.6.32 and 2.6.35 Linux kernels, and only have blobs for things like wifi drivers. This causes problems in porting/maintaining because features of new Android versions often rely on things only found in newer Linux kernels, like input drivers which send multitouch or pressure events, hardware-accelerated drawing, different wifi stack, etc. In that case there's really nothing you can do, unless you happen to have devs which get lucky, or just spend a ton of time fixing and backporting.

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CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 8:49 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

most phones are essentially worthless after ~2 years

I think this is largely an illusion. I have an HTC Desire (running CM7) that I bought nearly 2 years ago and it is still a very good phone. I have no intention whatsoever of replacing it anytime soon. I'm looking forward to seeing whether there will be a version of CM9 for it.

People tend to replace their phones every 2 years because their contract is up and they can conveniently get a newer phone. In this sense, a two-year-old phone may be »worthless« in an economic sense in that the mobile ISP has written it off, but it is not necessarily »worthless« from a technical point of view (such that it would not be worth supporting by something like CM).

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 12:11 UTC (Wed) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

After two years you're lucky to get any updates from your carrier. Phones aren't useless after two years if developers like aorth commit their time and effort to supporting them. I have a phone I purchased in 2010. The carrier abandoned it. Thanks to the CM developers, I can still use it with reasonable confidence that it's secure and maintained.