A little while ago I wrote an article about 5 things I hated about Android, and I realized many of the things I hated so much are problems that one team of developers have successfully eliminated on their own. Who? Why Cyanogen and the CyanogenMod team of course. I first discovered Cyanogen after getting the first Android phone (HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1) back in 2008. While I liked the phone, the speed didn’t impress me. I then went to Google and entered in “how to make the HTC Dream faster”, and lord and behold....XDA Developers.
After being an active member there for years now and witnessing the insane things that these (and many other) talented developers can do, I was faced with 2 questions: Why doesn’t Google/Android OEMs hire developers from XDA to help gets updates of Android out faster?....and....how is Cyanogen so much faster than Google and OEMs when it comes to pushing out updates and optimizing/improving them?
What CyanogenMOD Does
For anyone who doesn’t know Cyanogen, he is basically the Android Godfather when it comes to custom ROMS. His ROM is the base for almost all other Android ROMS, and if it weren’t for him and his talented team, the rooting and modding scene would certainly look a lot different. This is the team that brought Ice Cream Sandwich to devices that Google and multiple OEMs stated could never receive the update (due to hardware compatibility issues). This is the team that brought Ice Cream Sandwich to multiple devices 4 months before any OEM or carrier started rolling it out. This is the team that can provide Android updates for the device you just bought a year ago but is no longer supported by OEMs. What they have done with Android devices is nothing short of pure genius.
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