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What, specifically, do you hate? I have found that the VAST majority of problems with Android do not originate with Android, but with the OEMs and carriers forcing TONS of bullshit on them. e.g. all the useless apps and limitations.

If you haven't yet, try to flash a 3rd party ROM. I was extremely impressed by CyanogenMod but there are countless others available to suit your needs.

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/HTC_Hero_(CDMA):_Full_Update_Guide

Easy Step by Step instructions. Give me your mom's email address and I'll send her my phone # and setup her computer and do the root/update for her. She'll have to manipulate the phone, but I can walk her though that via skype or landline.

Please turn in your geek card if you have to have some stranger fix your mom's phone for her. Thanks.

I smell Troll (article) just as you did. I did some quick research and one of the "worst" Android phones on the list, the HTC Hero, and checked Cyanogen Mod for compatibility, and guess what, it runs the current CM 7.1 just fine. While it is true that HTC and/or Sprint won't maintain it, doesn't mean it isn't supported.

http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?type=stable&device=heroc

Yes, you have to "root" your phone, yes it isn't "supported" by HTC or Sprint, but so freakin what.

And if you HTC, Motorola or Samsung (who might actually be "getting it" and the carriers hand off support to CM when they don't want to support their phones any longer?

There are tons of good builds out there for almost every platform. http://www.xda-developers.com/ is a prime spot to start looking. Heck, my phone started as a Windows Mobile 6.5 and I'm running Android on it. http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ runs on a large number of platforms also. Who cares if the vendor continues to support it, most people wipe the stock image as soon as they get it home and put a better build on it. Nothing better than free support.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

Bottom right-hand corner.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/the-current-state

If your device was purchased with Google apps you can back up the apps and restore them legally to CM once installed or you can just legally download them here http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Latest_Version/Google_Apps

Out of curiosity, why did you feel the need to comment on something you obviously lack any real knowledge about?

You can download GAPPS with a browser. So long as your device was sold to you with Google Apps, you are violating no licenses.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/the-current-state

This still has absolutely *zero* bearing on Android being open source.

Tell that to Cyanogen.

Who got cease and desisted. The Google Apps that come with Android are most definitely not open, and as I understand it, people who install CyanogenMod generally get an illegal copy of the Google Apps separately, and the provider of this separate package remains open to a potential cease-and-desist. Without Android Market, which is among these apps, one can't download applications exclusive to Android Market, such as the application to deposit checks to a bank account.

what good will it be to get the source?

See obvious answer here.

Having the source to the drivers would be preferable as then they could be improved as well, but nothing other than being a purist stops you from using the binary blobs as-is and improving the code that is open source.

Google/Samsung/et al. don't have a separate timeout for slide lock & security lock feature. This was originally an HTC Sense feature but now is also available in CyanogenMod.

Why CyanogenMod? Well, that's because after I wrote the code to replicate & improve upon the Sense feature, I only submitted a patch to CyanogenMod. (Hey, it's what I use...)

The feature is in CyanogenMod 7.1 or later, and any other ROMs that pull from CM 7.1 as an upstream. As stated before, a similar feature is also found in HTC Sense-derived ROMs. However, HTC's implementation isn't as versatile as mine, so I suggest you disregard that and just use CM instead (haha).

Pull the source if you want; port it anywhere you like:
Framework code
UI code

Google/Samsung/et al. don't have a separate timeout for slide lock & security lock feature. This was originally an HTC Sense feature but now is also available in CyanogenMod.

Why CyanogenMod? Well, that's because after I wrote the code to replicate & improve upon the Sense feature, I only submitted a patch to CyanogenMod. (Hey, it's what I use...)

The feature is in CyanogenMod 7.1 or later, and any other ROMs that pull from CM 7.1 as an upstream. As stated before, a similar feature is also found in HTC Sense-derived ROMs. However, HTC's implementation isn't as versatile as mine, so I suggest you disregard that and just use CM instead (haha).

Pull the source if you want; port it anywhere you like:
Framework code
UI code

I too am unsure what exactly the submitter is trying to do.

But my oldskool HTC myTouch Slide 3G and my wife's HTC myTouch 4G running CyanogenMOD 7.x supports just about everything on the T-Mobile network.

Wifi & USB tethering work, so I can connect my laptop and/or other people's devices to the internet over HSDPA

Phone calls over wifi works, though I haven't really bothered to test it yet. But this sounds useful if you spend a lot of time somewhere with wifi but poor phone reception.

The Dolphin HD browser supports user agent tags, in case he's trying to use a proxy so websites will stop giving you the mobile version.

Opera Browser Mini will sort of proxy everything through Opera's render servers.

Could just use androidVNC to remotely operate a browser on your home machine.

I simply just use ConnectBot to ssh into a screen session on my home machine to do most stuff.

Also, if he just wants to configure a traditional http proxy on Android, LMGTFY provides a pretty straightforward though somewhat arcane solution (halfway down the page after the "just use Opera" entry: http://www.techxilla.com/2011/01/17/proxy-settings-for-android/

I have a G2 on T-Mobile. Put cyanogen on it and use any carrier. That does involve rooting the phone, but if you buy a phone fro mthier list of supported devices its really really easy.
http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

-Darkseer

The most certainly do take donations but they encourage donations to the EFF as well if you want to instead of donating to cyanogen.

But they still accept donations if you want to give them to cyanogen team:

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

And scroll down to the bottom of the page, lower right hand side.

I haven't seen many. Cyanogen seem to have ROMs for most of the current crop - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices. Can you link to a few locked-down examples?

You really haven't seen many devices that you have to root before being able to install cyanogenmod?

Many Android devices are effectively locked down

I haven't seen many. Cyanogen seem to have ROMs for most of the current crop - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices. Can you link to a few locked-down examples?

With Cloud based systems the interface is all you have access to

So not at all like Android then?

Well, you'd have to check cyanogenmod.com to see if your phone is on the list of supported devices. I've been running various CM versions continuously for almost three years now, and have yet to find an app that won't run. Quite the opposite: generally they perform better than under the equivalent stock release.

Yeah, I agree about HTC: that's too bad. I don't know if they've just gone "evil", or if this is an example of the known-evil carrier influence, but I stopped running stock firmware on any of my phones years ago and haven't looked back. That kind of behavior was a large part of my decision to go third-party (that and better battery life, more performance and more features than stock. Also, I didn't like being told that I can't do certain things, like tethering.)

Some carriers disable the "Allow Non-Market Apps" capability. That's enough right there to make me root and go with a CM or some other ROM.

Amusingly enough, the core CyanogenMod developers have made it abundantly clear that they vastly prioritize the ability of vendors to spy on users over the user's right to control who has access to personally identifiable data.

(Sorry for using biased language, but I think that denying a user control over hardware they own, especially by an open source project, is just asinine.)

Even more reason to root and flash with CyanogenMod or other custom firmware of your choice.

The G-Tablet goes for around $250 nowadays and is among the better devices supported by VEGAn-TAB and CyanogenMOD.

The stock ROM bites, though, and the lack of GPS, magnometer, and limited LCD screen viewing angles might be an issue for some. But I'm pretty happy with mine.

Unfortunately CyanogenMod is all but dead

Bullshit. That's a list of the nightly's for the Nexus S. Notice the dates. The last stable release was in May which was just 4 months ago. How often do you think they should be releasing? Every week? Get serious. People, not even modders, want to flash their phone that often. Every 4-6 months when a worthwhile number of upgrades get added to a ROM, release a stable update and keep the nightly's going for the truly insane. Anything else is ludicrous.

Funny, because I'm still seeing nightlies posted. Oh and there is also this.

I’ve been reading rumors that CyanogenMod’s core philosophy is changing, that we’ve been sold, or that we’ve given up and I want to go on record saying none of this is true at all. As you may know, there are only a handful of people that can approve changes for CM but a lot of developers for it. You may have noticed that we are operating at a slightly slower pace than normal, but that’s simply because we’ve been busy and real life responsibilities come before this project. No one is getting paid to work on the product.

You have most likely become aware that Cyanogen has been hired by Samsung, as that news is traveling through the Android community like wildfire. He is not leaving the project. Samsung is aware of his involvement in CM and there are no qualms from that end. He hasn’t been active recently because he is in the process of relocating to a new city for his new job, that’s all. ChrisSoyars has been hired by Grooveshark and is currently working on projects with them. Koush is working on his DeskSMS application as well as ClockworkMod recovery. And finally, my semester is starting as are my medical school interviews.

As they have before, our insane schedules will calm eventually and we can devote more time to the project. But just because we aren’t around to approve changes doesn’t mean development has stopped or even slowed for CM. There are 40+ talented developers programming behind the scenes night and day to give you the Android distribution that you have come to know and love. On top of all of the above, we are currently in a soft feature-freeze for another 7.1 RC. (You can call it a feature slushie if you like) Because of this, we are reluctant to approve new features that may prove problematic for certain devices for the sake of the stability of the entire tree.

All I ask is that you bear with us during this hectic time.

Yeah, sounds totally dead to me.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices

CM can't bundle the Google applications together with their ROM, but you can still get & install them separately: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps

I found this which suggests quite a lot can be removed, but not nearly all I'd like.

For instance, this can't be removed: "DrmProvider.apk: Provides DRM functions, needed to access media files (including ringtones)" and I most definitely would want it gone. I'll play my music on my own terms.

What use is a slashdotter boyfriend if he can't do this ?

Some people have had trouble getting that installer to work correctly.

Not to mention the fact that the cellphone version of Android is available in its entirety in source form from AOSP

The Market application is not; it's made available only to OHA members. I've read about problems getting Market back after installing CM.

Why not just link to Cyanogen's home page?

Amazing. You guys did both. We're proud of you!

I went to the website after reading about this to see if it was available for the Motorola Defy.
It seems like it's no longer available though.
Anyone have any insight?

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/motorola-defy

Why not just link to Cyanogen's home page?

Cracker? Hacker?
Do you have an idea on what CyanogenMod actually is?

I really hope you're right. According to the compatible devices list on CyanogenMod, there is still no Cmod available for my Droid/Milestone 2 and it's been out since November 2010. Granted this is a voluntary community and no phone gets tinkered with unless one of the devs actually owns it. But still. No one has even grabbed one off a friend?

While "standard" you can still remove them and have a functional Android system. The Cyanogenmod wiki has a nice list of what you can remove:
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Barebones

On Cyanogenmod the google apps are even a different install package (for copyright reasons, these are not open source) http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps and the system will work without this package.

I rooted my HTC Legend, installed Cyanogenmod, and I'm very happy about it. Blocking app permissions is just one of the reasons to install it. It also comes with a ton of extra configuration options. And I'm a hacker, so I hacked a few things to my own liking.

While "standard" you can still remove them and have a functional Android system. The Cyanogenmod wiki has a nice list of what you can remove:
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Barebones

On Cyanogenmod the google apps are even a different install package (for copyright reasons, these are not open source) http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps and the system will work without this package.

I rooted my HTC Legend, installed Cyanogenmod, and I'm very happy about it. Blocking app permissions is just one of the reasons to install it. It also comes with a ton of extra configuration options. And I'm a hacker, so I hacked a few things to my own liking.

Doing just this. It's recently gotten a lot easier with signed kernels and radios hitting the scene. Which means you don't need fastboot, very useful when you're doing multiple phones on a windows machine. For some reason the google usb driver breaks after each phone requiring a full reinstall. It's easier on Linux of course.

I also put a VOIP number/unlimited long distance forever with no bill on it :) Calling the company payoncephones(.com).

Anyway the community for the G1 (and many of the Android phones) is FANTASTIC. One of the best I've seen since my WRT-54G, (Tomato btw). They've got my phones up to 2.3.4, 5x the original battery life. 30% more available ram. 40% more on phone application space. Much faster storage thanks to EXT4... they've been FANTASTIC!

Anyway I'm offering reasonable pricing (both for upgrading and pay once phone forever VOIP). My website is phaistoscommunications.com, send me an email if you're in Toronto and need your phone upgraded. I ship phones all over Canada too.

Oh, and the upgrades you want are: HBOOT 1.33.0013d, Radio 27.08, Pershoot Kernel, Ginger Yoshi 1.2.1/ Beatmod/Lazlo(2.2)/AOSP(1.6).

Watch out for the unlockers, there's about 15 of them, 3 just take your money, some take your money and promise a refund (which I think they deliver but I think 1 doesn't).

Anyway I've chosen the G1 for it's amazing form factor but if you want any of these... http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices bought cheap on Ebay and upgraded, I can do that too.

It's getting easier which is great! And Android 2.3.4 is AWESOME! Much much better than my GF's iPhone 4 for the hardcore! Best of luck all of you Android Modders!

P.S. sorry about the crappy website... info's all useful though!

The only reason the carriers can charge for it is that Apple permits the arbitrary blocking of this service at their request and for their sole benefit. They have chosen sides and did not take yours.

Same with emulation, alternative browsers, plugins, banned political/mature apps, and lots of other functionality people in this discussion don't even know about since they don't have something like cyanogenmod running... after 24 hours of using a real OS and seeing what they're missing, I think this debate would be over pretty quick.

• There are a ton of free (cost & licence) applications for Windows. For almost every Linux application, there will be an open source equivalent for Windows, often the exact same program.
• Do you know why most of the applications in the Ubuntu package manager are free? Because almost nobody develops commercial software for Linux.
• As to the cost of Android apps, Google only takes their cut if you sell through them. Unlike Apple's ecosystem, you have the choice to distribute through other marketplaces or just by throwing the APK online for people to download. I don't know if Google restricts the licences of apps distributed through their market, but no one can stop you releasing the source if you're distributing the app yourself.
• Android is, for the most part, open source. As for other distros, perhaps you've heard of CyanogenMod?
• Anyone can develop for Android. For free. Here's the SDK for you. And as I mentioned, you can freely distribute the APK once you've finished.

no need to root it, most allow it. A vendor could provide a custom build that disabled it though. I would hope that that info made the rounds, like motrola locking down the bootloader to signed images only. Anyways, HTC provides a heavily customized version of android on their phones, "SenseUI". There are some nice things in it, the dial-er for example, but in general Sense is bloated slow, and a battery hog. I own an HTC Glacier ( t-Mobile Mytouch 4G) I ran the stock rom for about a month, before the lack of battery life drove me to CyanogenMod and I haven't looked back. I'll be moving up to android 2.3.4 here shortly.

But you won't have any Google Experience apps, and users probably won't really like a phone without Maps, Gmail, and the Marketplace (although Amazon is helping there). The base OS may be open (except for Honeycomb), but that doesn't mean all of what people think of as Android is open. Oh, and you'll still have to go pay others for patent licenses or risk being sued.

This is true, but Google app's are licensed separately to Android the OS. So you can do almost anything you want with Android Google App's are the property of Google.

However.

Not sure of the exact terms of the license but you can download Google apps from Google like you do with Cyanogen Mod.

Check the bottom of this page.

They do the very first time they get referred to something like CyanogenMod (which happens) and can't get it onto their phones following the directions.

Random Windows users download and install all sorts of crap onto their computers without any sort of training whatsoever. What makes you think they don't complain when they're suddenly stopped from doing so (Windows Vista's UAC)?

People have a basic concept in their minds that they should be able to do things with their devices, and when they can't, they can be amazingly resourceful. I know plenty of non-computer people who've rooted their Nintendo DS or Wii to do things they aren't allowed to do by Nintendo as well.

basically what they forgot to mention that it's open to device manufacturers which is a really, really, limited club.

Yeah and of course all the people capable of typing the commands I posted above. Really. Try it! You could I don't know make a whole new version of Android and port it to whatever phone you want. But no Android isn't that open, is it?

Learn the difference between a platform and an application. Only one of the two was promised to be open, and as someone who is currently running CyanogenMod on my Galaxy S which I bought from a carrier like any other, I really don't know what you're whinging about.

and right now, what I'd like, would be honeycomb android-x86(for development purposes), but I suppose it's a bit hard to come up with it while google is sitting on the source.

Google have announced their release schedule. Don't like it, fork it and make your own. It is opensource after all. I too feel like every character that Linus Torvalds types should be separately checked into the repo so that we can see him code live, but imagine the bugs. The release date for the source is set. You can wait just like the rest of us.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/about/features and http://www.cyanogenmod.com/about

A lot of stuff is listed there. I think Cyanogen provides a pure Android experience, plus some handy extras that I find pure AOSP builds lacking. If you'd rather have Sense, you can find all sorts of supertweaked Sense ROMs on XDA. But heck, go ahead and try CyanogenMod and see if you like it. After rooting, taking full backup of your phone is trivial, so experimenting after that is not that much hassle.

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/about/features and http://www.cyanogenmod.com/about

A lot of stuff is listed there. I think Cyanogen provides a pure Android experience, plus some handy extras that I find pure AOSP builds lacking. If you'd rather have Sense, you can find all sorts of supertweaked Sense ROMs on XDA. But heck, go ahead and try CyanogenMod and see if you like it. After rooting, taking full backup of your phone is trivial, so experimenting after that is not that much hassle.

install an antivirus, run updates, and don't execute apps from untrusted sources.

That pretty much takes care of a majority of your issues. Read other user reviews. If you feel the Android Marketplace is too laxed, try the Amazon marketplace. And if you decide to root your phone, pay attention to which apps you are giving root permission to. I mean, you are a Linux user after all, you should understand simple security.

Oh, and I suggest that if you are going to buy an Android phone, check and see if its supported by CM7 - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ Talk about a lifesaver - my Android phone ran like CRAP until I found this goody. You should realize as well that there are several projects to port CM7 to other phones that are not part of the official tree yet - my phone is not on this list, and the first ports for cm6 / cm7 happened just a couple of months ago. If you are using an unstable build, make sure you read the notes, and MAKE SURE you do a backup of the factory rom before you start installing your own stuff.

The GP's point was that the apps aren't "banned", they just aren't available from the official store. With an iDevice, you could argue that to be the correct terminology since you can't get apps any other way short of jailbreaking. With Android however, removing the apps doesn't mean that individual users are banned from using them.

Yes, and back in the days when tethering was not provided by Android itself, and my carrier (T-Mobile, as it happens) didn't allow tethering apps in the Market, I downloaded SlideMe and found a Bluetooth tethering app about three seconds later. All I had to do was check the box in Android's setup that allows installation of non-Market apps, and that was that. No rooting, jailbreaking or other unsupported activities required. And that's pretty much still the case.

Of course, once you root you open up lots of other possibilities, chief among them the ability to run third-party ROMs (like my personal favorite, Cyanogenmod). But basic tethering ability has been a part of Android for a long time now. It's the carrier's fault if you can't do it natively, not Android's.

Cyanogen's on it!

Has anyone written an app for android that let's the user set permissions?

One exists: Permission Blocker. Though it likely still has bugs and there hasn't been an update from the developer for a while.

I've tried it personally, and it works as described, although it doesn't seem to read packages XML perfectly (it failed to list the permissions for Firefox, though all other applications on the test device listed their permissions, which could be disabled). It requires root access and a reboot after each change. Denying some permissions forces applications to Force Close because they don't know how to deal with the denial from Android.

The Cyanogenmod team is taking the more complicated and functional route of providing acceptable responses applications will accept for denied permissions. A patch has been submitted [javascript required] that might be included in Cyanogenmod 7.1. Looks like there was a lot of activity just three days ago.

These things could be done by custom ROMs and I'd be surprised if they're not already being done by somebody.

It's not in any ROMs yet, but a patch is being considered for inclusion in Cyanogenmod 7.1 [javascript required]. Here's the related issue thread.

It will be great if this is included in custom ROMs, but I strongly feel one shouldn't need to void the device warranty for this simple, important, easy-to-implement feature. Google has no (good) reason for failing to include this in AOSP, and this is becoming more apparent by the day.

Cyanogenmod. Yeah, I know, I'm a fan. But it's pretty non-evil.