CyanogenMod Drops ROM Manager In Favor of OTA Updates 111
sfcrazy writes "There's some great news for CyanogenMod fans. The CM team has decided to drop ROM manager, which was the de facto standard of getting CyanogenMod updates."
Instead, the CM team is building its own updating method, explained (with screenshots) at Android Police.
great for trying but not for using (Score:1)
Glad they've moved towards a cleaner ota approach. I love RM as much as the next guy but if I find a ROM I want to use for a long time I don't want to use RM just to update it.
Better Android (Score:1)
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I love CM and couldn't live without it, but the rigor the roms are subjected to for any given device isn't anywhere near what they are for the carrier-manufacturer supplied roms.
Yes, I absolutely hate that AT&T does things like put a paid, read-only entry for Yellow Pages at the top of my contacts for my Galaxy S2, but the battery on the device doesn't run down after three hours like it does with CM. There are trade-offs.
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Re:Better Android (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Better Android (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better Android (Score:5, Informative)
That's not fair. I know plenty of smart people with iPhones, and a quick look at forums will show you many people in far over their head trying to root and install ROMs.
But it's very apparent that what you do rooting etc. is not officially supported, and more than clear that official lines of support are useless if you have issues. Now, if people were calling AT&T to complain about their jailbreaking gone wrong or something, that would be different.
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It is nigh impossible to brick your phone in an attempted jailbreak. There was an unlock solution a while back that would brick your phone if it was not compatible, but there were warnings everywhere on the jailbreak sites.
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i actually get tons of people who try to jail break their phones and end up bricking it. And they are clueless on how to fix it. and they expect ATT or Apple to fix it.
Not to mention the large amount of users who went to IOS6 and their phones bricked...
A black screen, failure to boot is not a brick.
You can still force update firmware, even if the phone doesnt boot.
Get a clue, read the FAQs.
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A black screen, failure to boot is not a brick.
You can still force update firmware, even if the phone doesnt boot.
Get a clue, read the FAQs.
You're asking an awful lot of an AT&T CSR.
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"people in far over their head".
Those are trolls. The same people who post the thousandth comment on a torrent thread asking if it haz viruz, duh? On a torrent seeded by thousands whose ISO image checksums (Yes, I like windiff...) the same as the retail...
I've flashed dozens of phones, going as far back as Symbian, even, for example, just enable SIM Menus on a carrier-WinMo or whatever. Guess what? Zero bricks, and I'm hardly an expert, just a user.
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If you've "flashed dozens of phones" than you're heads and tails above the average smartphone user. Sorry, not everyone is a geek. 99.99% of the people out there who own smartphones would have no clue to even understand where to begin to flash a phone. Hell, they probably don't even know what the term means.
As far as trolls? No, there are people who've heard of flashing from G4tv or some random podcast and think it's the thing to do. The number of geek wanna-bes is astounding. Real geeks are definit
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I wouldn't say I was over my head but when I tried to root my phone on more then one occasion, it didn't work. The biggest problem is that the forum posts are not organized with what is current in most cases and you find out after reading post 205 that the particular how to or way to root had been fubar'd by a provider update.
My real problems with this happened when the service provider pushed an update that broke the phone and I had to get it unstuck from a slash screen. It took roughly 2 days to find what
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The biggest problem is that the forum posts are not organized with what is current in most cases and you find out after reading post 205 that the particular how to or way to root had been fubar'd by a provider update.
And then when you ask a question, someone will complain that you missed post 343 on the previous thread.
I usually look for how to guides that are out side a forum (or forum posts that are less than a week old) when it comes to root my devices. After that's done, then I go through all the forums for roms and tools that are useful.
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I wouldn't say I was over my head but when I tried to root my phone on more then one occasion, it didn't work. The biggest problem is that the forum posts are not organized with what is current in most cases and you find out after reading post 205 that the particular how to or way to root had been fubar'd by a provider update.
(*note, I've been to numerous forums and they all suffer the disorganization issues which may be unavoidable when things change so rapidly.).
This, so much. On one hand, I don't want to complain about the forums and the developers because I could never have rooted my phone without the info, and I appreciate having the help and info, but OTOH it sure isn't a very straightforward process to find the right information for your particular model of phone, as even the carriers make changes to the base mfg models, then the specific version of Android on top of that.
Example: At one point I messed my rooted Fascinate up pretty badly trying to upgrade
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Yes, but you're missing the point a little. My first flashing went just as well as my latest one- I've never had a problem. IF something went wrong I'd be just as unlikely to know what to do NOW as I was then, as I said, I'm no flashing expert, just a user!
These trolls really do do it on purpose, regarding "viruses" or "bricked ma fone" or whatever, they never seem to follow up with logs or discussion threads or anything; I think they're manufacturer personnel spreading FUD or trolls. Goto xda; have a good
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I also should have noticed someone clarified my post for me before doing it myself. This is exactly what I meant. The group of people buying iPhones is far more diverse than the group of people flashing CM.
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Re:Better Android (Score:5, Informative)
That's because stupid people don't put CM on their phones. Stupid people do, however, buy iPhones.
They also know to lie to the CSR about what they did when there is a problem.
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Well, if you were on chans like #cyanogenmod or #revolutionary on freenode, you'd see a lot of n00bs comments like "I've screwed my phone trying to root it".
I'd rather say stupid people don't manage to install CM on their phones.
I suppose it's stupid to say that here on /. but you have to be very careful when rooting your phone ... Make frequent backups in case it goes wrong ... and above all think twice before doing *anything*
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Really, i am an escalation manager for ATT in a call center for ATT. My last few weeks since the Iphone 5 release has been about whiney bitches complaining that their phone does not have good battery life or connection to the network. God forbid Apple lied about a shoddy product. Yet I rarely get a call from a CM user bitching...
You get a lot more complaints by people using a phone that has sold in the millions than you do from a small group of people who bought phones then hacked a different ROM onto them? Well there's a +5 Interesting post if I ever saw one.
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You can easily screw up your device trying to get CM on it...
Hopefully, you'll have made a backup of your original image before doing that.
In my case however, I've actually saved my device from sending it back for warranty repairs because I actually had it rooted.
...and on some devices will lose functionality.
Yes, but that's usually not a problem. Once you've rooted your device and installed one ROM, trying different ROMs is super trivial.
CM may not be the ROM for you, for instance it wasn't the ROM for me, so I just moved on until I found a ROM that had all the functionality I desired and all the wrinkles irone
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Awesome!
Can't wait for this.
I run Cyanogenmod 9 on my Galaxy S II, everything works great, and battery life is excellent.
I run 10 on my Transformer TF 300, it works well, a little bit buggy.
I run 7 on my HTC Inspire, works fine.
Cyanogenmod is the ONLY way to run android, IMO.
But then again, I'm a linux user on desktops.
jaz
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No, dipshit anonymous coward, It means I'm willing to put up with a bit more configuration/troubles then the usual user if I perceive an improved user experience.
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... but the battery on the device doesn't run down after three hours like it does with CM. There are trade-offs.
You might give SetCPU a try [google.com], for a couple of bucks it's great value. It gives me about triple the battery capacity. I am on an oldish phone, though (HTC Desire), newer Android versions might have this feature on stock FW. In any case it's a no-brainer to underclock when you don't use the phone.
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FUD.
Galaxy S2, CyanagonMod 9.1.0, Over 48 hours battery life. I usually plug it in overnight and it'll be >50%
Re:Better Android (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. I never had a working camera app with CM. It would take anywhere from 0 to 3 pictures before forcing me to reboot the phone, and when I tried to take video, the visual quality was so bad that you couldn't recognize the people in the videos. That kind of killed one of the major benefits of having a smartphone for me.
Maybe they've improved it since then, but the last thread I read on the subject (maybe 6-12 months back) was "Well, the camera still doesn't work, but..." Needless to say, when I upgraded my phone, I chose NOT to install CM.
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My camera works great with my Evo 4g. In fact, everything but 720p video record works great with CM 7.2.
I have never enjoyed a phone as much as I have enjoyed this one and CM is one of the main reasons. I wish the prices of these phones would drop (consdering their age) so I could get my wife one.
The fact that so many of roms use it as a base is great as well. I only wish that less people would use icecream sandwhich as a base since that one lacks 4g and video playback for netflix (but I get the appeal o
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My camera works great with my Evo 4g. In fact, everything but 720p video record works great with CM 7.2.
Well then it doesn't fucking work "great".
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I don't know. I never had a working camera app with CM. It would take anywhere from 0 to 3 pictures before forcing me to reboot the phone, and when I tried to take video, the visual quality was so bad that you couldn't recognize the people in the videos. That kind of killed one of the major benefits of having a smartphone for me.
Maybe they've improved it since then, but the last thread I read on the subject (maybe 6-12 months back) was "Well, the camera still doesn't work, but..." Needless to say, when I upgraded my phone, I chose NOT to install CM.
I choose to disregard your post, because every time some journalist or blogger writes about how great the latest iPhone is, the quick responses of legions of android fans claiming that the Android phone du jour kicks the iPhone's ass (if running CyanogenMod), is the only thing that allows me to maintain my world view, in which my personal self-esteem depends mostly on the perceived superiority of Android to iOS.
If I allow myself to believe that you are anything other than a paid shill for Apple, my self-e
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Nah!! Worse would be switching to WP8 and finding that "It Just Works"
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Wrong slogan: "Have you tried it yet?"
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Or, "Have you ever seen one?"
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The answer to that one is "not really" at the moment. At least at presentations. "Thou shall not touch the phone!"
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Is that a nightly, alpha, beta or final? Did they list camera app not working in the release notes? If any of the answers is yes, than I have no sympathy for you.
CM does not necessary guarantee that everything will work. Also, depending on the popularity of any device among the developers, some of them do get left behind, while some are not picked up, and some devices are just awesome with CM.
>I chose NOT to install CM.
Congratulations: Now you know you have a choice.
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>I chose NOT to install CM.
Congratulations: Now you know you have a choice.
Oh, don't be so heartless. He didn't get his money back from Cyanogenmod, did he?
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More than likely it's not a "bug" of CM per se, it's just that they don't have the proprietary bits they need to make it work. The code for the OS is mostly open source, drivers depend on the manufacturers.
It doesn't make it okay, of course, but not all phones are that way. You need to do a little research before you buy (or get a Nexus).
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Oh, I agree 100%. I'm just pointing out that the grass isn't always greener on the CM side. CM definitely improved battery life for me, let me get rid of the crap-ware, and gave me more control, but the lack of a camera still killed it on that specific phone.
I go for the cheaper no-contract phones because I'm not willing to pay $40+ a month for phone service I rarely use/need. So I go for the $200 no-contract phones (recently picked up the Exhibit 2 for $180) and I pay $10 every 90 days for 30 minutes of ce
camera often tricky (Score:2)
The camera and microphone are often wonky nonstandard things that need special drivers. The CM team often needs to reverse engineer or hack together shims to get the original binary drivers working, but this is prone to glitches.
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Depends on the model of phone. Samsung Galaxy S had no camera problems in CM7, 9 or even the current beta 10.
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Why not just have the CM team be the official Android release team? That way Android users would always get the best new software without having to worry about carrier interference.
I agree, but Google controls access to Android up until at least the first devices start shipping (obviously in the case of Honeycomb it was far later) - at this point their OHA member partners have been building and testing devices on the latest OS through the development process and are privy to the implementation and feature details (for example things like NFC). Having OEMs launch with CM is a great idea in theory but they would only be able to start developing/testing after OHA members have started shi
jargon decoding (Score:5, Informative)
For those who were as confused as I was:
CyanogenMod is a community-maintained, enhanced version of Android, which you can replace the regular Android operating system on tablet and smartphones with, by flashing the ROM.
ROM Manager is an app for, well, managing Android ROMs. Until now, CyanogenMod has relied on it for installation and updates. However, it is 3rd party and not open-source.
OTA, contrary to the implication, is not a CyanogenMod-specific technology, but a general way of manufacturers pushing updates to their smartphone/tablet ROMs. See here [wikipedia.org].
CyanogenMod will now be using OTA updates to update its ROMs, so it should look to users more like a "regular" phone, which updates itself through the normal mechanism, instead of relying on this third-party ROM manager. (At least, that's my attempted decoding of this story; corrections welcome.)
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CyanogenMod is a community-maintained, enhanced version of Android, which you can replace the regular Android operating system on tablet and smartphones with, by flashing the ROM.
Given how things like cameras and stuff frequently don't work, im not sure i'd choose the adjective "enhanced"; i'd go with "alternate". I know lots of people who run the stock android because the so-called "enhanced one" is more trouble than they feel its worth; including me.
Re:jargon decoding (Score:5, Informative)
The trouble with CM or any AOSP (Android Open-Source Project - the code that is released publically) based ROM is that they don't have access to the binary blobs they need to make all of the hardware work, unless the companies upstream play along. This is why cameras frequently struggle. I don't know how much of this comes down to the phone manufacturer or the manufacturer of the specific part.
If it's something you care about, you know that going in and choose accordingly. As far as I know HTC tries to play ball; Samsung doesn't do bad; Motorola tries to make everyone's life hell. That isn't only driver support (or lack thereof), but locking down the bootloader and that kind of thing to specifically try to stop third party installs. HTC last I knew even had a "developer" program - all you had to do was sign up, give them some serial numbers and they emailed you a key to unlock everything.
If you need to be sure - buy one of the Google-branded models, the Nexus series. Made to be easily modded, necessary code and everything released. As such, they usually have the best and longest-lasting support from developers.
Re:jargon decoding (Score:4, Insightful)
Samsung doesn't do bad
You've obviously never tried to write wrappers for exynos blobs. The exynos chipsets and/or binary blobs are a nightmare to work with, and the main reason why the GS2 (and probably S3) have so many problems with CM. When it's not a Samsung-designed SoC (eg. OMAP or Snapdragon), it's a lot nicer. Sure, it's fairly easy to get a custom OS running on an exynos chipset, but getting it running well is... well...
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You're correct, I never have. That doesn't change my point, though. At least you have the blob to work with, that's better than some, but obviously not ideal.
Maybe that was a consideration in the OMAP being placed in the Samsung Nexus.
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All I know is my galaxy s II (I777) runs excellent on Cyanogenmod 9 stable. I have no force crashes, and AFAIK, there is nothing I'm missing from stock.
If they ever release a RC for 10, I'll upgrade, because there are a number of (mostly little) things JB does better then ICS, but as it stands, my phone is faster, better battery, and does everything the stock rom did, without all that bloatcrap.
(Aside) Come on, Samsung, give us a pure android experience, not cluttered with a buch of shit. You build
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I thought I might mention, Sony does particularly nicely with bootloader unlocking. They have a website with instructions and everything.
The only downside (for people who get their phones from carriers) is that they allow the carriers to prevent their instructions from working.
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They've abandoned Samscum Vibrant since Samscum won't release or can't release the radio source or even the specifications and due to that 911 won't work with Gingerbread or later. Samscum also uses their own proprietary processor they won't release open hardware specifications on, to get the good stuff requires an NDA.
So the poor compatibility cannot be laid at Cyanogen's feet alone, look at the phone vendor for some blame.
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Re:jargon decoding (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty close at the jargon. Few extra points though.
Cyanongen mod is based upon the android open source project (AOSP) that google keeps up to date with the current android source code. They take that, add a few extra features - like themes, and notification widgets - and compile it for a number of different devices. They're obviously constrained for closed source binary blob drivers though, especially if they're based upon a newer version of android (with a newer kernel version) than officially released for the device. Cameras and nvidia chips tend to be especially bad.
ROM manager is based around recovery mode; i.e. your android phones built in underlying method for flashing official ROMs. As part of rooting the phone (gaining root is gaining full control), this is usually replaced with a custom recovery tool like clockwork mod, with more options - and also lets you flash unofficial, unsigned roms.
So previously with cyanogenmod to update, you'd go to the website, download the latest copy of the rom (on your pc, probably), copy it to the phone internal storage, run rom manager which would then reboot into recovery mode and flash the new rom; or you'd go into recovery mode manually and install the updated rom you'd downloaded. For nightlies, you'd be doing this daily! Which kinda sucks.
One of my devices (nexus 7) I've been running paranoid android, a hybrid tablet rom - it's based upon cyanogenmod, but does extra stuff such as putting in the full tablet interface if you want, and allowing direct res control of individual apps. Anyway, it includes OTA (over the air) updates via goo.im. Basically, it pops up a notifier that there's a new version. You select that, download the new rom as prompted direct to the device (or later, via the goo.im manager if you don't want to update now), then you select to update it via the recovery mode automatically; it goes in, flashes the rom, and off you go, you're updated.
The new cyanogenmod OTA updater looks like it will work much the same; you tell it what updates you want (nightlies, stable), how often to check. You then forgetz about it. When a new version comes up you'll get a notification, you pull the update down directly, do an optional backup and install the rom without having to manually copy it to your phone,
It doesn't sound like much, but it significantly streamlines installing updates to your ROM and saves a fair bit of time poking around in clockwork mod recovery mode. Cyanogenmod by its very nature does a lot of updates for fixes, especially in the early life part of a new rom, i.e. all the jelly bean roms at the moment while bugs, drivers, features etc are sorted out.
You Still Need Thr ROM Manager (Score:1, Informative)
Re:You Still Need Thr ROM Manager (Score:5, Informative)
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Did this with fastboot only on my Wildfire. Twice :-)
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Re:A simpler method would be great (Score:5, Funny)
As a non-supertechie Android user, I sure would welcome a more simplified way to root and install these files. I attempted it a month ago, following instructions laid out on Androidforums for my LG Virgin Mobile phone. Got it right up until the final step when it refused to accept the code that I know I was inputting exactly. Had to give up in frustration, glad it wasn't bricked, though. I'd love to have full control over permissions on my device, and to securely lock it down from any hack attempts. Thanks to /. for this heads up story.
Just disassemble the bootloader starting at breakpoint 0x10C08000 and look for the argument to CLD R0.
Once you've found that, you only have to patch the configuration file with the new value and reassemble the kernel userspace.
Then just flash the ROM with the resulting srecord file and you're good to go.
Anyone can do it.
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I believe you just described how to brick a POS Windows Phone.
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It all depends on the phone you choose, the developer interest, and your level of patience. Some phones are inherently easier, some phones have more developer support to help, and if you wait long enough usually GUI-based "1-click" programs show up, if feasible.
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Uh, you should really look into that more. At the very least install SuperUser, if you can.
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I'm not familiar with the X-RAY app, but it sounds like you are vulnerable, but not necessarily compromised. As I recall, some of those are vulnerabilities in certain (usually older) Android builds. Could be used nefariously, but as far as I know most require ADB access - commandline access over USB from a computer. At least Zerg is, that's the only one I'm sort of familiar with.
Basically, on phones that are more locked down, sometimes an exploit of the Android platform itself is used to gain temporary roo
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Is it just for CM9+ ? (Score:1)
It sounds like it would simplify the update process quite a bit. However, the CM9 builds for my model are too unstable for everyday use, while CM7 is nearly rock-solid. (This may be the reason that the number of CM9 nightly builds far exceeds the number of nightlies for CM7, or maybe they're just slowly killing CM7 off.)
I'd love to see OTA updates as a feature in the earlier versions.
Look and feel needs more work (Score:2)
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I've been using it for months and I think it looks and feels fine. So, go figure.
But will CM sync my contacts? (Score:2)
For that matter, does the CM team actually read and act upon bug reports, because the Android team don't seem to.
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This isn't an automated sync, but is how to get the contacts on your device/sim into Gmail/Google:
http://androidactivist.org/protips/android-tip-moving-contacts-from-simsd-card-to-google-account/ [androidactivist.org]
You need to *move* the contacts. It's not super-intuitive, especially as it's more of a "copy" operation rather than a "move" operation.
Sorry if you already knew this and it doesn't work for you.
Be careful of domain squatting (Score:2)