LWN: Comments on "The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7"

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

pointwood — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:33:43 +0000

On my HTC Desire (GSM), battery life has been a lot better with CM7 than with the Android 2.2 + HTC Sense that it came with.

I quite like CM7, though I agree that the configurability can make it overwhelming.

CyanogenMod on Hero

rfunk — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:12:46 +0000

(Sorry, didn't see your comment until just now.)

It does run faster/better with CM6.1 than with stock. It definitely made her happier with the phone. Angry Birds became usable for her! :-) It also freed up a lot of space for apps.

Voicemail got slightly weird; she gets text messages for each voicemail left.

The phone is still slow and a little flaky though, and she's anxiously awaiting the day when she can get a new phone at a reasonable price.

I'm curious to see how CM7 works on the Hero.

CyanogenMod

arafel — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:19:32 +0000

I'm interested in learning from your wife's experience, mainly 'cause I've got a HTC Hero and haven't yet been brave enough to update it. :-)

Any major gotchas? Does it actually run much faster/better afterwards?

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

leoc — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:59:49 +0000

I've noticed that since updating my n1 to gingerbread (stock) the battery life has gone down so it may not be cyanogenmod.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

gerv — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:56:11 +0000

"(even if they still insist on using obnoxious forums for their communications)"

Amen, brother.

Gerv

Test coverage.

perbu — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:57:14 +0000

Does anyone know how this project does testing? I'm suspecting they don't have any testing which worries me because as the project strides on the difference between CM and Stock Android gets bigger and bigger - and so the amount of untested code increases.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

salimma — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:28:56 +0000

There are apps that let you use the camera flash as a flashlight on the stock ROM -- TeslaLED is quite good.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

salimma — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:21:14 +0000

a comma key which does not require a mode shift to reach

You can get that on previous Android releases -- just disable the button for voice input, it'd be replaced by the comma key.

CyanogenMod

rfunk — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:42:46 +0000

My wife has an HTC Hero, which is slow and will not get OEM upgrades beyond Android 2.1. So we put CyanogenMod 6.1 on it, so now she has Android 2.2 and various settings that allow the phone to run faster. (Well, mostly kill pigs faster.) I'm pleased that CM7 will also support this old phone.

I have an Evo already running HTC's flavor of Android 2.2, and have held off on moving to CyanogenMod because until recently it didn't support the Evo's 4G (Wimax) data feature. That's now in CM7 though. The more I see of CM the more I like it (and the less I like HTC's Sense interface), so I'm eagerly awaiting the final release of CM7.

Weatherbug

rfunk — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:30:10 +0000

Yeah, most apps have already needed to support black notification bars, since some OEMs customize the firmware that way. HTC's Sense interface, for example, has a black notification bar. WeatherBug and others deal with it just fine.

Weatherbug

felixfix — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:15:22 +0000

Weatherbug has an option to have black or white or something else for the notification bar icon color.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

yaap — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:07:59 +0000

Yes this is important, as it's a pre-requisite for timely security patches. But how much interest is there?

For regular Android, because the handset vendors can do arbitrary customization, they would be the one to manage the upgrades. And I'm not sure they're really willing to do that... It's cost for them, they don't care much. I only see them moving toward this forced by a big security issue, still to come. But with phone based payment coming let's say it's a fertile ground...

A community distro like Cyanogen would be a much better place to do that. But then I'm not sure Google would care making the effort just for them.

Maybe it's just me being pessimistic, but I don't expect much progress there before a big security problem force the industry to move. But we'll get there.

Link?

alex — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:58:41 +0000

Have you a bug reference for that?

Free software app store.

alex — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:57:40 +0000

You'll be wanting f-droid then.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

micka — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:10:20 +0000

Yes, it feels a bit more like open-source.
If only those "firmware" could feel a bit more like ditributions, with real package managers. Each package could have its own life instead of only beaing seem as a part of a whole blob.
What would be the point ? Updating involves a complete overwrite of the system instead of just replacing a component. I don't know if it's the case with cyanogen (I don't own a cyanogen supported device, my handset is a samsung spica that has is own, very chaotic, community).

I know it's not impossible,usual Linux distribution are already very good at this (actually, I just replaced the firware of a low-end NAS with 64Mb RAM with Debian Squeeze), but I suppose it comes from the form of the original Android code drops, that were kept by the communities.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

Richard_J_Neill — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:36:07 +0000

> Now if only we had a free software only "appstore" to go with it.

Seconded. I did file a bug-report/feature request for Android market to ask for a way to filter apps by License/funding model(*), but google decided to wontfix it.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

alogghe — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:13:45 +0000

I'm also greatly enjoying cyanogenmod, its well done.

Now if only we had a free software only "appstore" to go with it.

It would almost look like a linux distribution after that...

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

JoeF — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:29:18 +0000

I've been running CM7 since the early nightly builds on my Nexus One, and I love it.
The "wonkiness issue" is the only drawback so far. It basically means that either you can't hear the other side, or the other side can't hear you. I've had it, but very rarely.
One other issue I had was related to DarkTremor's apps2sd script, which creates an ext2/3/4 partition on the sdcard to extend the available internal storage (it puts the .apk, cache files etc. on the partition and creates symbolic links to them.) The clockworkmod recovery 3.0.0.5 that is used with the Rom Manager to install CM7 doesn't restore to ext4 correctly. Reverting back to clockworkmod recovery 2.5 solved that problem.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

tetromino — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:24:00 +0000

I've been using CyanogenMod since 7.0.0-rc1 on my Nexus One.

On the plus side, it really is amazingly configurable, looks better and feels faster/more responsive than stock Android 2.2, comes with a terminal emulator and a pretty decent FM radio app, and best of all, it lets you use the camera flash as a super-bright flashlight! (the stock firmware doesn't allow that).

On the minus side - battery life is on average worse than with stock Android 2.2; I've had it corrupt my SD card's filesystem on one occasion (fixed using fsck.vfat on my desktop machine); and on another occasion, the screen started becoming intermittently corrupt (fixed by a hard reboot, i.e. pulling out the battery).