Cyanogen has launched an official Wiki for CyanogenMod. The site is great for beginners who have questions like “What is CyanogenMod?” Visit the wiki page and find out all the answers to your Android hacking questions.
CyanogenMod is our favorite aftermarket distribution of Android and we are eagerly waiting for the next stable release (there is no legal stable release at this moment). The current experimental release is 4.1.999 (which should only be installed if you know exactly what you are doing). Experimental builds are not meant for daily use, unless you are helping to bug test and contribute to the project.
Google recently asked Cyanogen to stop distributing his custom Android roms because they contained closed source code. This caused a delay in the stable releases, but Cyanogen was able to continue his work after implementing a new hack. Users must now download the closed source code from HTC, then CyanogenMod backs up the closed bits while it drops the new code on top of Google’s (yes I’ve flashed it – I’m just simplifying things here).
There are a million custom builds of Android to choose from, but we stick with CyanogenMod because he maintains stable and experimental builds, has his own application to rollout updates, keeps a bug log, adds tons of performance hacks (like BFS), and remains very active in the community.
It is quite funny to see people discussing the legality of loading custom software on your phone, but I think we have rights to the applications that shipped with the device we paid for.
I hope that Google finds a better way to distribute their closed source applications, so that one day their software is installed on as many Android devices as possible.
For even more details, visit the official CyanogenMod website: www.cyanogenmod.com
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
3 Comments
I and others, have had great experiences with previous Cyanogen ROMs but found 4.1.999 unusable – be sure to follow the instructions EXACTLY so that you can revert if necessary.
So basically he DID implement an auto-backup/restore-afterwards method as seemed to be the likely workaround?
I have also had great experiences with previous Cyanogen ROMs but unlike Stefling, I am more than pleased with 4.1.999 (on MT3G) as well. Performance and stability blow the doors off the stock ROM and loading the cyan mod is really much more simple and low-risk than this article makes it sound. You would really have to go out of your way to brick your device. And “yes”, the CM Updater 1.4+ lets you backup/restore your original ROM.
What really knocks my socks off is the speed of the “3G via adhoc wifi” tethering.