CyanogenMod Blog

Average Android user I would be skeptical about, but ones that frequent the forums generally know their own devices fairly well (many are former iPhone owners at some point or switch back and forth). However, I would say that many of them also take cheapshots at Apple to defend their own positions better by claiming things that are absolutely not true (e.g. Android gets similar battery life with the same battery capacity, Android performance with Dalvik/Java is as good as native performance on iOS, a 5+ inch phone is easy to hold [Note 2]). Perhaps the most amusing thing I have heard are users that claim Android phones 2 years ago are as good as the iphone 5 is now. Perhaps if you rooted and installed Cyanogenmod[1] you got around a lot of the crap Android used to have or lacked and improved performance somewhat, but no way was the hardware or software of the Galaxy S or HTC Desire anywhere as good as the iPhone of today when it was stock. Galaxy S for one had that horrible RFS proprietary filesystem that Samsung stuck on it and was a mess to try to use stock. The rooting/modding community would later fix that by formatting it to ext4 after some extensive work. One thing I can say about the Galaxy S though is its testament to stand up to time and still running the latest version of Android. You can grab a Galaxy S off ebay for well under $100 in great condition, root/unlock it and flash Cyanogenmod 10.1 on it (Android 4.2.1) and it runs quite well for 2.5 year old…

It is both a company (https://cyngn.com/) and a open source community (https://www.cyanogenmod.org/).

It's possible to use CyanogenMod without Google apps http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/using-android-without-google/

You can sideload the ota image which retains your settings etc, image linked from here: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/12/23/flash-all-the-things-lollipop-… I upgraded from 5.0 to 5.02 using this method and it only made a slight difference to the horrendous performance I was experiencing on my Nexus 7 2012 tablet. I ended up installing CyanogenMod - tablet back to being speedy and snappy: http://cyanogenmod.org/

Are you familiar with Cyanogenmod? http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

My favorite feature of Cyanogen now is that they have Whisperpush enabled by default, which secures all text communications from a Cyanogen phone to another or to a TextSecure app. http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/whisperpush-secure-messaging-integrati… I hope they will be willing to integrate RedPhone by default in it, too, eventually. As someone who's more technical, I don't necessarily "need" Whisperpush, since I could just use TextSecure directly - however I think it's great that anyone who would be buying this phone would have secure communications by default (without even having to care about it - which is the brilliance of it), and the more people buy it the higher chance they will be communicating with a TextSecure user (or with another TextSecure federated client, since I think you can use the TextSecure protocol like you can with OTR).

What do they mean unforkable? Cyanogen Mod[1] has been doing it for years. [1]: http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

> I particularly would like a mobile OS that isn't tied to an advertising company (Google) and isn't a black box (iPhone). http://source.android.com/ http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ Plenty of choices of Android builds that have no closed-source Google code whatsoever. > I don't even have full comfort over everything running on my Android device. I have no way of knowing which companies can access the data on that device and the ways with which they can access it. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the OS. You think just because it's Firefox OS suddenly OEMs are going to open source their drivers, ship unlocked bootloaders, etc...? If so, I've got a bridge to sell you.

I like how http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ doesn't really tell you what it is or why I would want it.

>Also, I prefer Android (not free software, but at least more open Not free software? http://www.cyanogenmod.org

I wonder how this compares to established Free Software mobile operating systems such as Cyanogenmod http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

Android is obviously out of the question since it's just a different flavor of the same garbage Not quite: http://f-droid.org/ http://replicant.us/ http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

Perhaps Glass will be the killer app for CyanogenMod [1], then. [1] http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

I stand that it is: http://source.android.com/ Some people like to state that gmail, maps, the play store and other proprietary Google bits are not open source and that is true, but those are not android. Those are separate apps. Some like to claim that since Google gives vendors early access to the source, this somehow makes it not open. For those releases, at that specific date in time, maybe so. But, the source is released and generally pretty soon after phones start shipping (honeycomb was a different story and Google's statements on the matter have been proven to be true with the new combined tablet and phone releases). Look, if android wasn't open source, projets like this would be a lot less successful: http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

The target has been reached. Two noteworthy comments from the post, in the order I saw them. "I'm the MD of Bytemark Hosting in the UK, and noticed that you'd asked for donations for a CyanogenMod build farm. We have a few machines that would meet your requirements (or can easily upgrade a couple) and increasing numbers of our staff think it is a very cool project. [...] Please email me - matthew(at)bytemark.co.uk - and let us know what your ideal systems would be." -- http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/cyanogenmod-needs-your-help#comment-44… "Thank you all! The goal has been reached after 8 hours!!! You guys rock! [...] For those of you who volunteered hardware/servers, should the donation drive prove to be insufficient, we ask that you post your email or other contact info in the comments." -- http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/cyanogenmod-needs-your-help#comment-44…

I would like to introduce you to http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ http://miuiandroid.com/ two efforts among many that demonstrate that it isn't "totally" controlled by the carriers.

I'd argue its just as easy/easier to "crossgrade the OS" (whatever that means) on an android phone as a PC. Step 1: get a .zip from http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ Step 2: Place it on your SD card. Step 3: Reboot phone, hold down the power button, select "install update". Now you have an android device with the latest software, no bloatware, and a host of other awesome features.

Yes, there's a good chance of such a release considering the history of CyanogenMod [1]. Too bad the update won't be straight from Google this time. One of the key benefits of the Nexus One for nearly 2 years comes to an end. [1] http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

I'm running Android 2.1 on the G1 courtesy of the cyanogen mod (http://www.cyanogenmod.com/). Its been very snappy and has surprisingly had minimal bugs for a beta release.

Here is CyanogenMod's Post: https://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a-fork-in-the-road All of this is so sad. At least for me. I've used Steve Kondik's CyanogenMod on my ADP1 and have used CM until I got a Nexus 5. It was just so much better than anything the OEMs could produce at that time and had great customization features. Only Android 6.0 has stopped my yearning for CM. I think it had a profound impact on Android or at least it's technically oriented community. Even MIUI started as a CyanogenMod Mod, afaik, before Xiaomi even produced Android smartphones. I couldn't understand the rage in the community when Steve wanted to create a business around CM and to this day think that their business model has only benefited CM. pfSense and nginx seem to do just fine with a similar approach. Did Cyngn (Cyanogen Inc.) fuck up? Did Steve make mistakes along the way? Were his business partners toxic to the company and CM? - Probably yes and no to some degree to all of these questions but hey, it was mostly great I think. Sad to see the company go and sad to see CM probably die slowly. At least in the form it exists in today. Hope dies last so I hope that CM will somehow survive...

Sigh, this whole Android is open or not argument is degenerating into the kind of arguments over 'Copyright infringement vs. Stealing'. Here's one good solution, call the open Android as Androidium(on the lines of Chrome vs. Chromium). Very good article on the openness of Android and to implement the above proposal. http://marketingland.com/what-is-the-one-true-android-and-how-open-is-… >Some like to claim that since Google gives vendors early access to the source, this somehow makes it not open. For those releases, at that specific date in time, maybe so. But, the source is released and generally pretty soon after phones start shipping (honeycomb was a different story and Google's statements on the matter have been proven to be true with the new combined tablet and phone releases). The problem came to fore when Acer got threatened with being cut off early access etc. when they wanted to launch other phones with Alibaba OS (Aliyun) on them. It's sort of a Android fork, but that's legal, but still Acer had to fold under the pressure or force getting cut off from their mobile business. Early access is much more important to OEMs than you make it seem to be and being able to fork is the core tenet of open source. >Look, if android wasn't open source, projets like this would be a lot less successful: http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ You know what, barely anyone would use CM if they couldn't get access to the Play Store and Google Apps like Map. So they download it…

"But it delivers few of the practical benefits that were meant to stem from the term (control of your devices/computer, the ability to modify the software you use)." Of course it does. A lot of people I know run community mods of Android of their phones, or at least used to do so for a while. Cyanogen seems to be a popular choice: http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ That some phone vendors choose to make it difficult to install your own version of Android is not the fault of Android. Maybe Android could have a license that forbids the practice, but it would be debatable if that would be more or less open. Also I'd argue that if you care enough to install your own custom OS, then you are likely able to figure out which phone to buy (ie Nexus One). It seems however that the "only publish source code of releases" poses a problems for vendors considering releasing Android based hardware. It probably gives Google at least a little bit of leverage. Which might be a good thing - most anti-Android people seem to complain that Google is not able to exert enough pressure on manufacturers to maintain quality standards.

Thanks. Yup. https://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a-fork-in-the-road

Speculation is confirmed by this: https://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a-fork-in-the-road

"It will come as no surprise that this most recent action from Cyngn is definitely a death blow for CyanogenMod." https://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a-fork-in-the-road It's a complete fork from CyanogenMod to be called Lineage. https://github.com/lineageos

https://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a-fork-in-the-road "Yesterday, Cyanogen Inc (Cyngn) announced that they were shutting down the infrastructure behind CyanogenMod (CM)." A close reading of the original blog post (which mentions "Cyanogen-supported nightly builds" being stopped and provides a workaround to "anyone who wants to build CyanogenMod personally") clearly suggests that the post is primarily about the CyanogenMod build servers, and not about CyanogenOS.

Cyanogen Inc the company did. There is still Cyanogen Mod the Open Source project. http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/cyanogen-inc-and-cyanogenmod

http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/more-stagefright Looks like Cyanogenmod has patched this toot-sweet.

This article's title is terrible, but just to make clear what confused many in the Ars Technica comment section, Cyanogen Inc is partnering with Microsoft, which is a totally separate effort from CyanogenMod (except that Cyanogen Inc is trying to commercialize it). CyanogenMod meanwhile has announced that things are going to continue as normal, with no Microsoft apps to be found: > We are not bundling or pre-installing Microsoft (or any Cyanogen OS exclusive partner apps) into CyanogenMod[1] [1] http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/microsoft-and-cm12-1-nightlies