CyanogenMod 7.1 brings 24 Android phones into fold

Android smartphone owners, rejoice! CyanogenMod, one of the better custom phone firmware offerings has been updated, adding support for 24 more handsets. The list of added phones includes key recent releases from Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and HTC: HTC Desire S HTC Incredible S HTC Incredible 2 LG Optimus 2X and T- …

[Arnold Lieberman]

Other variations

Note that there are also ports of CyanogenMod to loads of other handsets, including the El Cheapo LG GT540 that I picked up for my son. Apart from a slightly iffy resistive screen, it works brilliantly now, including all the Android 2.3 goodness such as VOIP, apps on SD etc.

Fantastic work all round.

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Unofficial_Ports

[PaulR79]

One of the better? One of the best!

For those who don't know about it I think the best way to describe it is stock Android on steroids. I've been running CyanogenMod on my phones since my G1 and have it on my current phone an HTC Desire HD. It's so fast in use and over the years the testing process has improved a lot, especially from the days of it being mainly Cyanogen where a small mistake meant lots of .1 builds quickly released after the stable versions.

For anyone wondering about the version this is Android 2.3.7 which surprised me as I was only expecting 2.3.5 but it's a good surprise. The tweaks in the ROM are fantastic and it's silky smooth in use no matter how long I've been using it. There are other ROMs, including some Sense-based builds for HTC phones and they are generally smooth to start with but some have a habit of slowing down the longer the uptime gets.

The new phones listed are mostly newer models but a few (Defy and other Motorola phones) are older phones, if you count September 2010 as old. Motorola pretty much said they wouldn't be getting updates beyond Android 2.1 so these custom ROMs are great for breathing life into an aging product. Madness really, abandoning a phone like that but that's what put me off Motorola in a big way as I own a Milestone. HTC and Samsung in the future, HTC preferred but they need to work on battery life.

[Olafthemighty]

Thanks, PaulR79!

A most useful comment. Are you new here?

[Dean_]

Those were the good old days..

Running CM on the G1 and waking up to find a new release along with a couple of .1's

[Bassey]

Re: PaulR79

I absolutely agree with everything PaulR79 said above. I would also add that, for budget devices like my San Francisco, you get much more free storage (230-odd MB free comapred to about half that for the stock ROM) and battery life has also improved despite the massive increase in performance. An iPhone toting colleague (an old 3G with a dieing battery) admitted my £99 SanFran significantly outperforms his iPhone on many apps and tasks with CyanogenMod.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it support the Touchpad?

Reading the update notes I'm not at all sure it does say it includes beta support for the Touchpad. What it actually says is;

"There are many devices still in beta status (Pyramid, Doubleshot, Shooter, HP Touchpad, Optimus 3D, several more) that we will be promoting to release or release-candidates in the next few weeks when the code is merged to our main branch."

So if it's not in the main branch, presumably it's not actually in the 7.1 release, right?

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/cyanogenmod-7-1-released

[Dan Price]

I liked CyanogenMod 7.0, but its known bugs on the ZTE Blade / Orange San Francisco (Crashes if the screen locks while on charge or just whenever it feels like it) made me jump ship to Swedish Spring. It's only based on 2.2 rather than CM's 2.3, but it's absolutely rock-solid.

[Trainee grumpy old ****]

Re: CyanogenMod on a Blade / San Francisco

Been running nightly builds upgrading every week or so for a some time and screen locking while charging is just a memory from the dim and distant past.

[Dan Price]

Ah, that's good to know. I might have to give this latest version a go then, next time I have a spare few hours to kill re-installing all my crap.

[Christophano]

I finally got round to putting CM7 with the Honeybread theme on my Galaxy S2 last week.

There are a couple of bugs here and there (as I expected, it is a nightly build) but overall I am very impressed.

With Touchwiz I had to have loads of features turned off (live wallpapers etc) to try and make the battery last but so far CM7 is coping far better, even though I've got pretty much all the bells and whistles turned on.

[danjackson]

Installation instructions

I'm very excited to see that CyanogenMod now supports my Xperia X8 phone, but I notice that there seems to be a dearth of any actual installation instructions. There are terse sentences like "use ROM Manager" and "it's on the wiki" and such but none of these things appear to provide any detailed information for users who are not familiar with the custom ROM installation process.

[Miek]

I couldn't agree more. I have often looked at the instructions and gave up because whilst achievable I found I simply couldn't be bothered.

I wish the "ROM Manager" was as easy to use as it sounds.

[alun phillips]

RTFW

Instructions on the Wiki http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/HTC_Ace:_Rooting_%26_CyanogenMod , at least for the Desire HD, go from first principles. IMHO if you don't find them instructive enough then flashing custom roms probably ain't for you.

[Bassey]

instructions

I may be wrong but I'd suggest the reason there are no instructions is that there is almost nothing to do. Once the ROM Manager app is installed, tap the first item on the menu to "Flash ClockworkMod Recovery". After that is done, go to "Download ROM". You get a list of ROMs with CyanogenMod nightly first on the list. Tap it and it offers to download and install.

The only "gotcha" is that, if you are using the free version, after it has installed (and it takes about five minutes once the download is complete) you have to go back into the ROM manager, download ROM and choose Google Apps. Otherwise you have no Android Market. If you use the paid for version it asks you if you want to install the Google Apps when you download the ROM and looks after all that for you.

But, basically, once the first step above is sorted and, assuming you have paid the £1.50 for the app, updates take two taps and less than five minutes.

[patrick_bateman]

gone are the days of manual instal

download there app from the market,

it will then list the builds you can install, select the one, and then when it restarts you have your new build.

Used them since my G1 and they do very good work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah

Where's the Galaxy Ace?

[Paul Smith]

Xperia is coming - but not yet

From the CM web site...

"Users of Sony Ericsson devices have been left out of the CyanogenMod experience for a while now. We are happy to announce that users will be able to enjoy a full-fledged CyanogenMod with nearly full hardware support (we are still working on FM radio) starting in our next release. You can also expect nightly builds and more instructions soon."

The key words are "starting in our next release"...

Paris, for getting me all excited, then leaving me flat...

[thesykes]

great....

Shame O2 have kindly locked the bootloader on my Xperia... cheers

[Paul Shirley]

SE are working on unlocking

Keep an eye on http://unlockbootloader.sonyericsson.com/which-phones

My shiny new Xperia PLAY should arrive in a few hours, think I'll try stock for a few weeks just to see what it's like before the major hacking fun, been a bumpy ride on my old phone ;)

[patrick_bateman]

go back to looking at the original unlocking instructions on XDA for android devices, this will put a new bootloader on and then you can go from there, check if it works on your hardware first of course

[CDPlant]

Working great on my Desire HD, I like the Sense-like 'ring' to unlock or answer calls. If anyone else is on a DHD I suggest getting Lordmod's kernel for CM7, much smoother and better battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

Still waiting for the Tablet version...

for the Motorola Xoom

[Paul Shirley]

nice to see the project progressing

Should silence the naysayers that claimed CyanogenMod was dead with Steve Kondik employed by Samsung. Just noticed last night Sony Ericsson claim to be helping and Samsung have donated hardware in the past. Looks like a long future ahead of it.

As the owner of an ancient G1 I always found CM too fat to use on it (before they dropped support) but it does have some nice toys and fixes and they're easy enough to merge into leaner AOSP builds. CM makes it's way into most roms out there one way or another.

[The Original Ash]

Brings security permission revocation

7.1 brings support for granular security permissions control by application. For instance, you download a news reader app which has permissions for internet access, crude / fine location, you can disable the location permissions and the app *may* still work.

Settings > CyanogenMod Settings > Application > Permissions Management

[Craigness]

Fantastic!

Granular permissions is one of the things I needed to look into before converting. I have some apps which I've not updated because newer versions demand unreasonable permissions. I assume that when I log in to the new ROM (and Market) all the latest versions of my apps will be automatically installed, which is not necessarily what I want.

[Robert Caldecott]

Oxygen for HTC Desire/Samsung Galaxy S II

I am currently running the excellent Oxygen ROM on my HTC Desire after trying CM7.1 for a week or two. I had issues with music playback (stuttering playback) and also noticed that memory usage is quite high. I failed to get any help for the playback issue despite posting in various CM forums. This is my only beef with CM - plenty of people post issues in the forums but very few people answer ... which is a shame.