Slashdot Mirror
Do Android Users Still Use Custom Roms? (androidauthority.com)
"With all of the drama at CyanogenMod, Android Authority takes a look at the current state of custom ROM development," writes Slashdot reader Thelasko. From the article:
The future of CyanogenMod appears uncertain, after the open source ROM was forced to fork under the name Lineage OS. Fortunately there are already other remixed versions of Android available, with some of the most popular being Paranoid Android, Resurrection Remix, and Dirty Unicorns... [But] with each new version of Android, the gap between Android and popular custom ROMs has shrunk, which begs an interesting question: Are custom ROMs even necessary anymore?
To answer this, let's take a quick look at the state of custom ROM development as it exists today.
The article points out that mobile virtual reality is "on the verge of becoming mainstream and the wearable market has grown tremendously," asking whether custom firmware will also integrate these newer technologies. But the original submission also asks a question that's closer to home. What custom ROMs do Slashdot users have installed?
The article points out that mobile virtual reality is "on the verge of becoming mainstream and the wearable market has grown tremendously," asking whether custom firmware will also integrate these newer technologies. But the original submission also asks a question that's closer to home. What custom ROMs do Slashdot users have installed?
A lot of rom sites have recently closed up shop so now you have to dig through forum posts and bugfix threads. It's becoming a pain in the ass.
I have Cyanogen on two devices, and I will ALWAYS have a custom ROM just to eliminate all the damn bloatware. If there are programs on a new device that I can't uninstall without rooting (and there always are) it's time for a reflashing.
with devices being more open and less carrier specific... there seems to be less crap. with less crap, there is less of a motive to root.
How do you custom Memory if you can't write to it?
Do you even Member what ROM means?
FTFY
Is this the dumbest question in the history of Slashdot?
Go to XDA. Pick you phone. Find the ROM you like the best.
Fuck...
I still use a custom rom because Google stopped updating the Nexus 4 and my phone is still working just fine. I run Chroma which runs 6.0.1, whereas the last supported version was 5.1.1. Oddly enough, Chroma is more stable than 5.1.1 was on my phone.
I don't really trust Android security that much, I trust even less downloading an OS from some potentially dubious source and using it for everything my phone gets used for.
Two of my three Android devices have custom ROM's, and the third probably will once the LineageOS folks start pushing out reasonably stable builds.
The only reason the third doesn't currently have a custom ROM is that Motorola didn't go batshit with the bloatware, so waiting for the warranty period to up wasn't a pain.
Log in or piss off.
Until Google can ensure people get updates and allows people to choose ALL of the software on their device (including the removal of carrier specific garbage) people will root and ROM.
Let's begin by saying that the stock ROMs on certain devices have become very adequate. I own a Nexus 5X and a Moto X Pure smartphone, and their stock ROMs are basically a pure Android experience. The software is already lean without any carrier bloat. Everything works fine, except for the times when google's rushed updates may sometimes introduce a new bug. I also run a stock Samsung ROM on my Galaxy Tab S tablet.
On the other hand, there is a considerable cost to using a third party alternative ROM like Cyanogenmod. For one, those third party ROMs don't always support hardware as well as the stock. If you had read release notes for something like a Cyanogenmod release, you had surely run into statements like "limited camera functionality" or "fingerprint sensor, etc".
Another issue with third party ROMs is that some software builders actively block or sabotage them. For example, the AT&T's Uverse streaming service will detect whether you have a rooted or third party ROM and stops working. The Netflix goes only up to 480p resolution on a non-stock ROM. "Fixing" this probably involves editing build.prop and hiding your root, but I haven't tried it recently.
I don't know if it's just me, but the more crap they try to add onto a Smart Phone the less utility I found out of it. Any real work I need to do I just can't do on a phone. And I'm too busy to bother with any of the crappy games I can get for it. I don't need a fitness tracker. I don't need social media AT ALL.
Since most manufacturers stop caring about their phones after a year or two, custom ROMS are great for keeping 1-4 year old phones useful. My Galaxy Note 2 is still a fantastic phone running CM. The only reason I stopped using it and gave it to my wife was that the SD slot was unreliable. She doesn't need the storage, so she does very well with it. I'll likely put a custom ROM on my Moto X Pure in a year or so when Moto stops releasing new ROMs for it.
------- Mark
Unfortunately, custom ROMs are still necessary because phone manufacturers, carriers, and even Google itself washes their hands of any phone that is older than about 2 years. Often they stop offering system updates even sooner than 2 years. This forces people to install custom ROMs to keep their phone operating systems up to date.
I don't care what anyone claims -- a smartphone's useful life is way longer than 2 years, so it's unconscionable that these Android companies do this. Compare to iPhones, which are supported for up to 5 years. I have been using Android phones (Google Nexus models) for several years now, but I have seriously considered going back to iPhones because of this and because of app availability.
I recently got a new phone (OPPO F1s) and it is the first phone I havent been able to unlock the bootloader and install a custom rom on. :@
My last few phones I have used all sorts of roms but normally settle on aosp. Im not keen on cyanogen but love slim and krexus
I will never buy another OPPO or recomend them to anyone
As long as stock ROMs are highly restrictive and come pre-loaded with a bunch of garbage and backdoors, it will be necessary.
I've been rooted with a Custom ROM since the OG Droid. Running Pure Nexus on my N6p now. Building LineageOS ROM right now to try.
Yeah that's just you.
Cool story, gramps. We'll make sure we get off your lawn.
Modern app appers don't use LUDDITE custom ROMs or LUDDITE stock ROMs. Modern app appers only app APPS!
Apps!
I personally use the ROMs that root the device and remove bloatware. Some also incorporate access and the ability to tinker with a lot of the settings.
I am relatively new to the smart phone scene, as I spent the majority of my corporate life on a blackberry. Only when we switched from blackberry to Windows phone (what a joke! And our fortune 100 company is trucking along with them still!) with the same corporate lockdowns, did I jump ship and become a two phone person. Everyone else in the world could watch videos on their phones, why not me. Getting a Nexus 5 was a breadth of fresh air and going to a custom mod was one of the first things I did. I saw how my older brother would always complain about bloat ware on his Verizon phone and how he could not install some ad blocking app, and figured a custom mod was right up my ally. I still enjoy it, but have not been back to see how things have changed in the last few years. Googles pixel seems to have a lot going for it.
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Who in their right mind would trust an unvetted ROM with all of their personal data?
If you care about not being tracked on spied on, how do you do minimize spying and tracking on a phone that isn't really yours?
The only reasonably good option for those of us who don't want to give in to unethical large corporations (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.) has been to buy a phone that works well with custom roms (typically a Nexus, or perhaps now a Pixel) and install Cyanogenmod or similar.
Assuming you don't install Google Apps or Google Play, the otherwise non-removable misfeature known as the "advertising ID" magically disappears. No vendor or carrier crapware. You can download and install select apps from the F-Droid open-source app store. It generally works pretty nicely.
The big challenge is that the custom roms don't always get updated very often. Many phones need to be hacked to unlock their bootloaders etc. The Nexuses (and pixel, if you don't buy it from Verizon) have been a nice way to get a well supported phone with an unlocked bootloader.
Hopefully LineageOS will continue where Cyanogenmod has left off.
Heh...quoting op: The article points out that mobile virtual reality is "on the verge of becoming mainstream
Yeah...right, here we have HTC Vive and a monster computer that would make any high end gamer proud just to run it, and he's talking about those little goggles you put on a mobile phone as Mainstream VR?
If it wasn't so sad and a blatant lie, I'd laugh uncontrollably.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I expect a few to be stolen from me or need a new battery from an unopened standby phone.
im petrified of touching Roms due to unstability even after rootkit semi-worked (kingo).
still on LG l34c and KitZkat 4.4.1
I rooted my phone to allow me to install apps with root access, then the phone wouldn't let me update while it was rooted, so I installed a custom ROM that would. If I have to unroot my phone every time I need to update it then I might as well just install a custom ROM.
The plus side of "the drama at CyanogenMod" is that the new Lineage OS has a much better name than "CyanogenMod" ever did.
Chinese spyware is great!
Because until we get unmolested pure android OS installs that allow us to remove all baked in crap the Carriers and phone makers try and sneak in there, Android users will need a way to get a smooth and clean Android experience.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't trust stock ROMs and I can't stand their lack of customization. It's a requirement to be able to install LineageOS (formerly known as Cyanogenmod) on my daily driver phone.
My phone is a few years old but it still works fine. There's nothing that my phone doesn't do but a new phone would. The problem is that Verizon has stopped supporting the OS, so it's got some holes in it. I went with CyanogenMod because I could put a newer operating system on the phone.
My OnePlus 3 stock roms have been good enough to not even make me bother looking for alternatives, plus I just got Android 7.0 updated to it. I used Cyanogenmod on my devices for years, but now that my phone doesn't have annoying bloatware, provides tethering, etc.... The ONLY reason to up custom ROM is to install your own firewall. to block apps from accessing the internet.
Sorry about the AC, but yes, at least as much as I stay "stock." Depends on whether I'm getting anywhere with the vendor or not. Now to see what this "Lineage OS" can or will do...
I know it is built on top of cyanogem so it is probably on shaky ground now. I was thinking about giving it a try though.
I'll stick with flashing custom builds.
I use custom ROMs.
One of the original models. Still use it today, unrooted.
I must be like, the 10-ish people that actually like Touchjizz.
It has its flaws, but it works well enough for multi-tasking, which is one of the biggest reasons I got it.
The other major one being VNCing my PC anywhere in the house.
A minor one being experimenting with app development, but I never got around to it at the time. I am looking at it now!.
Being able to sit anywhere in or out the house and work with the PC is real handy.
I have a simple bluetooth keyboard that hooks on to the case I got for it if I ever need to type. (if I am programming, of course sometimes I just end up using Hackers keyboard if it is light programming, it works well enough)
I heard a few people using Android tablets as hacky graphics tablets using VNC/RDP, so I tried it out and loved it. *
Most apps I use regularly are floating window apps alongside a browser, image editor (mainly for notes, ironically, typing is awful on touchscreens, far easier to write AND sketch notes).
Maybe occasionally a few games. Fallout Shelter being the one I've played most. (even showing a 3 year old niece how to play it, "where's the peoples?")
Besides that, I want for nothing else really. I rarely view media on it, besides Youtube videos here and there.
I do have another tablet I've yet to play with. A Hudl, it was doubly cheap because a deal and sisters staff discount! woo. (probably why Tesco abandoned Hudl! woops)
I'll likely root that and experiment.
I did see one guy had his smartphone set up in such a way where he could have multiple windows open, and could resize all of them with a middle anchor point. 3 windows at that, he had 2 small ones at top, and a "main" window at the bottom, for example. I assume 4 is the max.
* It works rather well. The usefulness of being able to zoom in on the tablet while the screen is still 100% is incredibly handy for pixel work. (in fact, just handy period, works as well for natural work and cel-shaded)
Depending on the OS you use and the protocol, you may or may not get pressure sensitivity.
But to be honest, I never did care for that feature before, I still don't.
>70% of the artists I follow HATE dynamic width/opacity/density, the rest mainly use it either for sketching, various messy art styles where you just throw stuff on and go with the flow, unthinking, that's it.
Variable opacity is about the most handy one since that is great for sketching with opacity unlocked (so it draws over itself), and opacity locked is great for highlights and shading since you won't make messy edges where brush strokes overlap.
But I still don't care for pressure sensitivity. I prefer perfect control. Digital art is great because you don't "suffer" from the non-standard strokes you get from traditional media. But you can emulate all of those styles and more if you ever need them.
Got a Samsung Galaxy S4, with a locked bootloader. So this means once I have root, I never update again.
Custom ROMS are way out of the question.
One reason why I use a custom rom, is to have a consistent user interface between different phones.
So you go to a pizza place. Let's name it Sammy's Hut. You start browsing the menu and you see the house special... It's a mess - it's like they tried to be healthy and trendy and full of spice at once. The clerk calls it "a whiz choice, recently we cut half its calories", but it's still an overengineered ball of mud, only gonna satisfy whoever can't grasp the fine line between taste and variety. You settle for the good ol' margherita, maybe add the usual ham, it never really disappoints - you get to feel the restaurant style with a tried and true classic, you figure what to try next time, if you decide to come back to the place that is... Unfortunately, that margherita felt like it had the same ingredients than the house special, it just didn't look like it.
Some months later you're out in Italy and you try this new spot - it's called Gugely's, and they say "it's where pizza was invented". They only really serve 3 pizzas, and they're basically the same only changing in size and shape. They do seem like a balanced and adequate for different appetites, but you know what, they say whoever comes doesn't really feel compelled to come again. Despite tasting really good, they're all boring.
There's a dessert place around the corner from Gugely's: Sweetpertino and they make an apple pie that is always made from the same tree, yet the dudes that go there eat them like zombies. Especially after they get fed up with Gugely's. They are loyal though, and the thing is really expensive for plain apple pie. My guess is they really like expensive apples. It's not anywhere as nutritional as pizza, but zombies be like... Whatever.
Fed up with apples (or maybe never had the cash for them), and not wanting to go back to the "en vogue" spots, you dig up an underground place that brags can prepare the pizza you need. They are upfront about some limitations though: what you need is not always what you want, but at least you get to decide what you think you want. They also warn your stomach might not take it; that some people are allergic to their pizza type of "source"; that some even refuse to swallow their non-standard meals. They tell you to sign an insurance release at the door, but trust me, most that go there don't even understand the consequences - sometimes they have really bad produce, but luckily you can smell it from afar if you try the least, and just change the dish. But you know, nobody really cares when looking for the perfect pizza fix they can't find anywhere. Where this shop really distinguishes itself from others though: they let you take the recipes home, mix them up, go back to them and request small changes, and at the end of the day, you can just return your pizza for a brand new one. You can do this as long as you can stomach it. Suffice it to say, it's a releasing experience and some just can't figure out what to do with so much freedom. Some give up at the first try. It is also said a lot of people go back to apples and Gugely's. Nobody really goes back to Sammy's - they'd rather have their stomachs burst from a overly zealous gastric band.
So after all that rant, what do we really learn from pizza and from people? There's no perfect pizza for everyone, that's obvious. Some fancy variety, some tolerate simplicity, and some just don't like pizza at all. Then there are those that only like pizza they can see being prepared and know the source of the ingredients. Some only want genuine ingredients even though they don't need them. It's a big shame some essential ingredients can only be bought from exclusive sellers that don't always want to sell to non-regulars, then again it's for their own commercial reasons, like every company should. The time for the perfectly balanced pizza can only come after a perfectly balanced society arises, one that only has the best interest of the customer in mind. Then again some call that communism, and it's the worst thing since the plague.
Me, personally? I make my pizza at home. That means my kitchen and my stomach are always fully prepared. WHAT HAVE YOU EATEN LATELY?
The downside though is on less popular devices and even many popular ones you run into glitches like front camera not working, wifi disconnects, driver issues, etc. Still a great way to breath new life into an older but still useful device.
Silence is a state of mime.
Still on an original Moto G because custom ROMs exist, which is great since it's still useful to me
Bloatware, privacy, support, all send you to something other than stock.
T-Mobile stopped supporting my Relay at JB. At least with CM I've got KK, and there are words indicating that CM's successor is going to bring out Nougat for it. (Didn't know that could happen, thought the graphics was too primitive, but I'll take it.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have a Nexus 4 and Nexus 5...both no longer run the latest android direct from google....but with custom ROMs they both run 7.1.1 flawlessly.
Just sayin'.
devices remain compatible ie unlocked boot loaders.
if you go over to xda-developers custom ROMs are still a big thing. custom ROMs would even be bigger but many phones are shipped locked down with locked boot loaders and unroot-able, so users can't develop their custom ROMs or install them.
T-Mobile and Sprint traditionally have been the most custom ROM friendly shipping phones with unlocked boot loaders. as such communities have spung up on xda-developers with dozens of custom ROMs for popular unlocked devices especially Samsung. people also like to install Google's entirely vanilla version of Android getting rid of what users dislike about Samsung/LG/HTC ROMs and software.
Cyanogen might be a ROM but I don't think it has a ton of users. It's probably the most commercial of them but not the go-to-ROM of someone who wants something custom.
They're right though. Smartphones are just a teaser to get you to carry a device on you all the time everywhere so the man can track where you go and what you do. GPS, check. Email, check. Internet shopping, check. Tap to pay, check. Able to be activated through "optic nerve", check. The NSA thanks you for your cooperation.
WiFi Tether without paying extra to the carrier for the same data you're already paying for is a feature.
Backup specific apps and their data ("Titanium Backup" or its successors) or the entire device ("NANDROID" backup via TWRP, CWM, PhilZ, etc)
Root apps allow flexibility carrier-ROMs don't. Greenify shuts down unused apps. Xposed allows changing almost anything about Android operation (the "framework") with easy installation. See this link for top rooted apps.
None of these are available with locked bootloaders, and stock ROMs. (The NANDROID backup is available with stock ROMs but is if little value).
MotoG4 using Silesh Nair xt16xx 7.1.1 Lineage OS 20170113 ROM
Ehud Gavron
Lineage builds are starting to roll out. Once there's some builds for my device I'll cut over. I've never had any problems.
Stock on my device is terrible cuz Verizon. I just rooted and removed the bloatware, but they clearly were never going to fully patch even stagefright, so went with CM as I did with most of my devices.
It's the only way to dream of electric sheep. #Philip K. Dick
Both my devices are rooted w/Cyanogenmod as it was easy for one (one-click installer) and I knew more for the other, I need access to install my custom Hosts file to block adds/Facebook, I also want a firewall, which you aren't getting without root (if there's a way, please let me know).
There are other capabilities that require root that I use regularly.
My devices came from Google, so weren't bloatware loaded thankfully, but having control to eliminate things that affect performance is required.
It's a tool for my use, not someone else's tool that I get to pay for and use for their purpose, thank you very much.
PS: LineageOS, the successor to CyanogenMod, is nearly up and running according to their latest blog post.
Sure we do, the "problem" is the amount of market share that Samsung has. Samsung, at one point, was extremely helpful in one way or another to the rom developing community. Those times are now long gone, Samsung is one of the dirtiest devices by far to attempt to flash a new ROM onto. The first challenge is obtaining root, without root no recovery or system images may be flashed. Now even if the device itself by some miracle becomes rootable, there's still a significant amount of work needing to be done. Custom roms may not be flashed if the bootloader itself is locked; there's no way to flash a custom recovery, and then pass the checksum tests performed on boot.
Since the Galaxy S5 (S4, however bootlock was not strictly enforced until later), Samsung has locked down the devices hard; with certain carriers, *cough* AT&T , *cough* Verizon , the device actually becomes a brick. Of course, Samsung blames the carriers for this, however if we look at T-Mobile devices, a good bunch of them are not locked down in this way. In a sense, this situation is akin to "permanently renting" a phone, which you have no freedom to setup how you like.
Lastly, why am I picking on Samsung? Everybody and their grandma have some sort of Galaxy or Note device, just because of the sheer number of these phones out there, someone could easily make the [wrong] assumption that Android phones no longer have this capability.
Phones from HTC, Google(Nexus), Motorola, have special pages on their websites, where you post your device's identifier token (thorough instructions), and by doing such unlocking their bootloader—and therefore free to flash recovery images, and totally different ROMs. This sounds more like a phone that you've paid for, if not up front, then through your monthly service bill, a bit at a time.
Would you purchase a Corvette with a governor set to not allow faster speed than 45mph? Perhaps on a rental vehicle, sure. Not for one the customer paid for.
AT&T's and Verizons policies are disgusting, and shame on Samsung for giving in to them. We can only assume other manufacturers are given similar orders regarding bootloaders, yet here they are hosting unlocking tools on their very own legitimate website.
Absolutely. An unlockable bootloader is one of my must-have features on any handset I purchase. I wouldn't buy any device without custom ROM support. I love being able to run a de-bloated version of the software I want on the hardware I want. The Nexus/Google devices would be great for me, except that they don't have a replaceable battery like the LG phones do.
Not just custom roms. Custom roms can be better in that they strip out some of the privacy invasive tech and bloatware, but every phone is a tracking device so much more needs to be done. A new design around EOMA68 modular computing would be ideal. I don't care about owning a traditional cellular phone. I want a texting device of sorts that'll ideally work when I go into town that doesn't depend on cellular technology (ie like a HAM radio) and can connect to cellular networks as desired (for Bitcoin/internet). The combination of the two would enable one to turn off the cellular modem if separated and contained properly from the main device. Then you can easily communicate with those near you without a cell phone- and get messages whenever you connect to the internet (think like dial-up back when you have to pay per minute).
No, it doesn't "beg the question". It RAISES the question, which is what you meant. Learn the fucking difference and stop trying to rewrite definitions simply because you're trying to sound cool.
I used custom ROMs ~ from Android 2.1 until Android 4.2. Eventually I noticed that unless you use a Galaxy or Nexus device, your ROM will probably never get updated and your uncommon hardware may get burned out early (I've lost many wifi / gps / bluetooth / 3g-4g chipsets that way). Since 4.2 I've let the phone remain stock from whatever company offers frequent updates and little bloat. I would buy a Nexus or Pixel but they have always missed the mark for the kind of hardware I want. The Nexus 6 was to huge and expensive. The Nexus 4 and 5 were unimpressive. The pixel is ridiculously overpriced. While I don't use custom ROMS anymore I can definitely see the value in them. They fix things which manufacturers break when customizing Android. Custom ROMs also offer things which vanilla Android doesn't. Custom ROMS usually perform much better. When it comes to Android phones I don't have company loyalty. So far my household has gone through two Motorolas, two Sonys, a Blu, three Samsungs (never again), two HTC, two LG, and one Amazon. If you include Android tablets I've also had a Lenovo (never again), an Nvidia, and a Huawei. If I had to pick favorites it would be nvidia, Motorola (before Lenovo) and Sony.
I used to put Cyanogen on all of my phones. Originally it was because I always purchased used phones from friends, and by the time I got my hands on them, if I was lucky enough to get an update to the stock ROM, the update usually made the phone worse. Cyanogen usually made these phones usable again. Later I found the best part about having every device on the same custom ROM was consistency. Cyanogen made it so all of my devices behaved the same way, menus were structured the same, settings were easy to find etc.
I have given up on custom ROMs mainly because the carriers (Verizon) have done everything they can to make it as difficult as possible to install a custom ROM. They literally go out of their way to make phones worse so you have to pay a monthly charge for "features" (tethering). Most likely I will switch carriers when my current phone starts having issues. The selection of rootable phones will probably be one of my top criteria when choosing a new network. Another thing that will deter me from using a network are Network Neutrality violations, such as T-Mobiles "Binge On" plans that don't count data usage from specific services; we have started down a slippery slope and the only ones to win will be the cell companies and their bed buddies.
No, it's me too.
"Real work" which for me means web design, is impossible. Typing anything longer than a paragraph is *possible* but definitely not enjoyable. The games I want to play are more like Civilization or Pillars of Eternity than Candy Crush. I don't like giving all my private information to Facebook, nor do I even want to converse with the idiots that populate it, so that's useless. I do use Telegram as a messaging service, so I guess that gives the smartphone an edge over my flip phone. I could do pretty much the same with SMS/MMS but Telegram is more streamlined. I do use YouTube on my phone on the rare occasions that I'm away from a big screen AND I have more than a couple minutes to kill.
Sometimes I find myself wondering what possess people to buy a $300 phone with a battery that won't even last a day. Maybe all the "early adopter" types think that's the way smartphones have to be? By the time I got a smartphone, it cost $30 and I can comfortably forget to charge it at night as long as I'm not talking on it for hours.
I rooted and ultimately went to a custom rom because I honestly don't trust the things my phone carrier installs and I wanted the ability to block advertisements. Google has gotten much better with giving users the ability to limiting software permissions but could still do more. Older software automatically get permissions enabled for compatibility when they shouldn't.
Well please do. I do live in a red state and I'm too cheap for warning shots.
I still do and will continue to use custom ROMs that try to restrict the amount of proprietary blobs to the drivers (in lack of a better alternative). I do not trust, and do not feel I should be forced to trust, whatever ROM + bloatware the manufacturer cooked up and preinstalled on the device. Who here would use the preinstalled Windows on a Lenovo laptop? No one? Then why should I be less demanding for a device that integrates a ton of sensors, is tied into pretty much all my communication, knows my calendar, and is with me 24/7?
Sadly, free software was never really a concern for the custom ROM folks, who focused on shiny new features instead. By now, there is little room or need to improve upon stock AOSP, so there is little need for that kind of custom ROM. However, if there was a shift of interest towards freedom, there'd still be a lot of work to do and a lot of room to improve upon the current state.
Ehh, no thanks. I loath the entire new design of Windows for one. And I've been too badly burned to trust a Microsoft hardware product again personally, as listening to my room mate throw her own phone against the way in frustration kind of really confirms that decision.
Well then what the hell do you do with your smart phone? Out side of a weather map and a notepad program anything of real merit I need do with a computer I can do way better from there in less time than trying to do it on my phone.
I've been running custom roms ever since my first Android phone (G1). As others have rightfully posted, phone makers do not provide updates for much more of the initial 1-2 years, plus most manufacturers have lots of junk on their setup that you can't get rid of otherwise. Not even going to start about the delays until updates are released. ... (like decreasing battery capacity, actual defects, etc.) I'd probably still be using my Nexus 4 if the touch screen wouldn't have a dead vertical AND horizontal area... after that, I got an "old" S5, upgraded it with Cyanogen within 10 minutes of getting it ... up to "N" now, and will probably use it until it too dies of old age ;) Not what phone manufacturers would like their customers to do :)
I do understand that there is little reason for a company to support a phone that's more than a generation back, as for one, many customers seem to swap their phones every 1-2 years, and supporting the old phones for longer would a) only cost money for a quickly diminishing amount of users and b) possibly keep people from buying new phones for the new OS they have.
I typically replace a phone once the technical issues I have with it outweigh get on my nerves enough
I live in Japan. Japan is a nightmare when it comes to cell phone selection and service provider flexibility. I run CyanogenMod on my Motorola Razr M. Partly because I HATE Softbank's bloatware. However, the cell radio and battery life have both been terribly unstable/buggy. The phone is on its last legs and I bought a used Sony Xperia Zx Compact to replace it...but I bought it from AliExpress so I need to flash it with a custom ROM so I can stick my Softbank SIM card in it. Why do I go through all this trouble? Because Softbank doesn't sell a physically small (screen
I'm sitting in Vietnam right now after a week in Thailand. I carry a Chinese phone (Doogee X5 Pro) with a stock ROM that supports 2 SIM cards. All I have to do for 4G data + cellphone is grab a $10-15 SIM card in the airport. Which takes about 5 minutes. Sometimes I really love the free-wheeling nature of developing economies.
One MAJOR advantage of custom firmware over stock Android is that it has proper privacy support. CM has a thing called privacy guard with finegrained control over what an app can see or do. Android has some built-in privacy controls but they're nowhere near as good.
For example, the BBC iPlayer app will refuse to run on a phone with stock Android if I deny it access to the telephone number, but under privacy guard I can prevent it seeing the phone stack completely so it behaves as though its on a tablet. That means I can use iPlayer on holiday with custom firmware but not with stock.
I use AndroidX86 in VirtualBox emulators. In my opinion is a better debug environment than standard Google SDK' one. Faster to start and execute.
I use it and the main reason is that when I pay £500 for a device upfront and not on financing so that it's not part owned by the phone company I expect it to be personal and not full with crapware. I also like to be able to keep updating Android. Manufacturers will sometimes stop updating their ROMs where as custom ROMs will still keep going. Having a fully rooted and accessible OS is also important. There are a number of problems with custom ROMs though:
* Android needs a lot of work in being upgradable while retaining data. I am not sure if it was meant to be easier than it is but because of things like "the cloud" I think local settings and so on has been allowed to become a mess. There's no standards enforcement to my knowledge. Trying to restore a device between updates is annoying. Theoretically though with the right standards, discipline and organisation it shouldn't be a problem and the process should be seamless. It's not a hard problem in computing. It's just neglected. When you poke under the hood you can see some of the workings of an organised system but in practice things tend to be a pain in the ass.
* A lot of manufacturers don't make this easy. Some devices can be hard to flash. Often manufacturers only let their software work with their ROM or non-custom ROMs. I have had to decompile and recompile to fix this at least once. There's no legitimate reason for the incompatibility. It just checks some ROM property and opts not to work.
* Similarly you can have problems such as low level drivers not being available and potentially losing access to more exotic peripherals on the phone. Similarly developer support even for major devices might not be brilliant.
For example i cannot upgrade to android 7, because Xposed is not ported yet and the developers writes, it gets more and more complicated to port it with each release. The Xprivacy (Xposed module) developer sounds similiar unmotivated. And without such stuff, you're xposed (pun intended) to the world of shitty apps, which transmit private stuff like your IMEI to their companies.
The problem is, google has no open development process, where the ROM and mod developers could follow each commit and adapt their software, but releases a big bunch of changes with each release and until the custom ROMs adapted, there is already the next release out.
A few years ago, I bought an LG Optimus P920 over the hype of 3D cameras. The hardware was good, but the stock OS was slow and buggy (not to mention the lack of updates), so I decided to root it and install Cyanogenmod. The difference was impressive, however, I had to install the firmware from some obscure shared file to make the radios to work. Sorrowful, I rolled backed everything and left the stock image. A few months later I replaced it with a nice Nokia N9.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
I would have used a custom ROM on my old and current samsung tablets, but ROM devs never seem to have releases supporting tablet hardware, only phones
Until phones start coming without bloat, and carriers/manufacturers provide constant updates to their phones even after they stop being sold, custom ROMs will continue to be used.
Enough said....
I'd really like to have a custom ROM so I can get better control over my palmtop computer, and better diagnostics for the crashes. But the custom ROMs that are available all have this in common: they don't have access to the "phone" part of my smartphone. This would be like putting a custom engine into a car so long as I can't use it on public streets. So no, the device manufacturer has made certain I won't be using a custom ROM in my Android smartphone.
but I never buy phones that have custom roms available.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I have 7.1.1 running on a circa 2013 phone. AICP seems to be a pretty active group and do weekly builds for quite a lot of older phones. Prior to that I tried Ressurection but punted after bootloop issues, AICP installed first try. So I can't really say if its the "best" but it certainly seems to function well and that's more important to me than having a gadzilling bells and whistles.
I have two active Android devices. On my phone, I run Venom Rom. I just updated to N and am quite content with the build, features and functionality. On my tablet, I run a build of my own make. It's pretty buggy but I've been using this platform to teach myself so nothing is lost. I also run an Android VM on one of my home PCs. It has a custom ROM as well but much like my tablet and for the same reason, it is pretty buggy too.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
I'm leaving my current job to an unknown future in Japan and have to turn in my company iphone when I leave.
This put me in the position of not wanting to spend a lot of money on a smartphone, but still needing one that I can use in Japan.
Instead of buying one over there, I picked up a new LG G3 on Ebay for $155:
1) Removable battery and microsd
2) Flashed with Fulmics rom for newest Android features/security
3) AT&T version of the LG G3 supports all the Japan LTE bands.
So far, I can't say I have any complaints or issues with this rom.
if you call AOSP custom then yes , as far as i'm concerned it's more the samsung skin that is custom and replaced by purte android on all my devices
I loaded custom ROMs on my first three Android phones, and spent a ton of time tweaking things. This is not all that different from what I used to do with Linux years ago.
However, a number of things happened such that I no longer bother:
- Android got a lot better overall
- Samsung boot locked my stupid phone (GS6) - bad
- Samsung started issuing monthly patch updates - good
I'm vaguely considering trying to find an unlockable phone for my next one, but after getting burned by Google with my last Nexus tablet that they killed with an update, I'm not real thrilled by them either.
- Necron69
Who needs custom ROMs when you can have all the same bugginess via OTA updates from Google. This is also why I won't touch a Pixel. I don't need to pay iPhone prices to be a Google Tester. The Nexus 6P was bad enough price wise.
All kidding aside, you can run an alternate Launcher and get 90% of the benefit of a custom ROM without voiding your warranty. It used to be you needed a custom ROM to tether, now carriers have figured out that this is a revenue stream.
You bet your ass they do. I've NEVER run a stock rom for more than a couple weeks. Here's my plug for the oneplus phones. You can pry sultan's rom out of my cold dead hands.
So I've been a Cyanogen, and Android user since the original G1 android phone and ran it on the LG G2X, motorola photon Q (backlight died after a few months) and Galaxy S4. Cyanogen kept the G1 usable for longer, and up to date after it wasn't supported, and made the G2X and S4 actually usable, and got rid of the crapware and samsung UI. This time around I decided I'd roll with the stock rom on the OnePlus 3 for a little while, and haven't found anything I miss from cyanogen, and just decided to stick with it. I just got the nougat update OTA yesterday. I need to root it, but keep putting it off, since the directions say it'll wipe everything on the phone. It had some bugs on initial release, but they've actually been addressed, and they push out updates pretty regularly. Asides from the shelf screen (if you don't like it, it's easy to ignore) it's a pretty pure android experience with no bloatware. If they'd just make a phone with a hardware keyboard, I'd be perfectly happy.
Obvious:
Make calls,
Take notes,
Browse the internet.
Camera
Video
Social Media
Games
Email
Less obvious:
Navigation
Traffic predictions so I know when to leave home.
Car Bluetooth music server
Pay for street parking with a push of an app parking (works in undercover park garages as well so I don't need to stand inline at the ticket machine anymore).
Connect to car's ODBII port to figure out what keeps turning my check engine light on
UPnP Media server tied to hifi system in the house
Remote control for my Kodi box
Skype
Sleep tracking
Linked to my Nest so it automatically turns the thermostat off when I leave the house and turns it back on if I'm expected home within an hour.
Learning a foreign language
Speaking of foreign languages - Live translation of foreign languages.
Tracking flights with my corporate travel agent app (quite useful if you fly a lot, especially with the bad weather causing a lot of cancellations)
Linking to International SOS services in case something happens while I'm not in my home country
Cloud client to quickly get files
WiFi tethering
Internet banking
Paying bills
Splitting bills
Paying at a checkout
Synced with Exchange calendar so I get meeting reminders
Connects to my bike power meter and cadence meter, speed meter, and heart rate monitor via ANT+ as a damn good bike computer for racing training.
Regulates interval training when running.
Order movie tickets online, pay for them, and retrieve them from the local machine.
Track which beer I drink (Untappd, it's like Facebook for beer)
Debug network issues by scanning WiFi channels
Debug network issues by port scanning
I'm sure there's others, this is just off the top of my head.
I've never installed a custom ROM, in spite of being very tempted to do so, because the tools to get one installed are largely Windows based and are seemingly universally closed source.
Using closed source software to do something "they" don't want you to do seems like a great way to invite malicious code onto your system.
I'd run it from a VM but then there's the whole USB passthrough issue and I'm concerned about bricking my device.
Even the god damned Nexus phones don't have a hidden switch the enable root. Nope, have to use some kind of exploit.
If there was some way to install a custom ROM *through the front door* I'd do it.
Because our beloved Xposed framework is still not compatible with Android 7.0+ (Currently at version 7.1.1), so-called "custom ROMs" are our only saving grace. Google has taken the absolutely backward approach of trying to discourage this practice through things like image-based updates, huge warnings when a bootloader is unlocked, etc. It's ridiculous. A phone is no different from a laptop, and should have no more restrictions.
On my Xiaomi mi3 I've just installed Lineage OS. Main reason ? I've always liked mi3 but not Miui, and with Cyanogen first and Lineage now I'm able to have Android N on a 2013 phone. I think it's enough.