Almost two years ago I got my first Android device, a Nexus One. I was not at all impressed right off the bat. Coming from the iPhone world, things just didn’t seem … “right” about it. On the other hand, I was intrigued by it and kept wanting to check it out. Eventually, I forced myself to use it for a couple of weeks straight. My eyes were opened, and iOS never again seemed the least bit compelling to me.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to tell you that Android is “better” than iOS. It’s a ridiculous premise. “Better” is subjective. I like it better now, but it took a while to see things differently. After several months, I did go back to my iPhone for a couple of months due to the fact that my Nexus was not compatible with my carrier (it was a gift) and I got sick of using Edge rather than 3G. A couple of months later, I got a Windows Phone 7 device, and that was cool too. But after spending several months on all three mobile platforms, I decided that Android was my favorite. So a year or so ago I went out and bought a Motorola Atrix. No doubt the best phone I’ve ever owned.
In the last few weeks or so though, I noticed it was having some problems – it would freeze up for a couple of seconds, then be fine. Actually, I guess that was the only real problem. I figured it was probably something I installed that was running out of control or had a memory leak or something. Who knows. But I figured after a year of installing and uninstalling God knows what, it might be time to wipe it clean and give it a fresh start.
Gearing up to do so, I gave a check on the current predictions of the release of Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s targeted for 3rd quarter 2012 for the Atrix. Not waiting. But how about a manual install? I’d looked into CyanogenMod for the Atrix months ago but it didn’t really look like it was ready for prime time. But looking into it last week, it seemed like a pretty viable solution. I bit the bullet and decided to go for it.
The steps I took are outlined in this post at android-advice.com, but I will add a few points of importance:
A. Find a Windows PC you can use for this process. There are probably ways to do it on Mac or Linux, but all the tried and true and stable tools seem to be for Windows. All the tutorials, advice, forum and blog posts assume you are doing it on Windows. So if you try to do it on something else and run into trouble, you’ll be out in the cold. I used my ancient, 6 year old PC laptop running Windows XP. It worked fine.
B. I don’t think it is mentioned in the post, but you’ll need to install the Windows USB drivers for the Atrix. Just search “atrix usb drivers” and you’ll find them easily.
C. As of this writing, the post links to a CM9 rom build that is a couple of versions out of date. Go to the source and get the latest build from Jokersax: http://www.jokersax.com/developer-pages/jokersax/cyanogenmod-9-atrix/. I used Beta 0.3.3, but just now I see that 0.4.0 is out. Hmmm… I may have an update to this post shortly after posting it.
D. The post also links to an older version of Google Apps that didn’t install at all for me. In the comments of the post, someone linked to another version. That installed, but Google Calender sync was broken. Again Jokersax to the rescue: http://www.jokersax.com/developer-pages/jokersax/cm9-gapps/. I used the gapps v10 build. Worked like a charm.
Other than that, follow the steps of that post TO THE LETTER. There are a few basic steps. First, the prerequisites:
1. Rooting your phone. The post links to another post with explicit instructions on how to do that. Follow them exactly.
2. Installing ClockworkMod. This is as simple as going to the Android Market, searching for an app named “Rom Manager”, downloading it and installing it.
3. Unlocking your bootloader. Again, there is a link on the above page with instructions.
Prerequisite 1 and 3 are the only real places you will need a Windows PC for. The rest of the work is done directly on your phone with ClockworkMod. Basically, you copy the new ROM onto your SDCard, use Clockwork to wipe your current OS and cache (note that step 4 “Wipe cache and wipe dalvik cache” is actually two distinct steps – the dalvik cache wipe is in the “advanced” section of Clockwork’s menu – see the video on that page), and then using Clockwork to install the new ROM and then Google Apps the same way.
This should all take you a couple of hours. Maybe a bit more if it’s your first time doing this kind of thing. Like me. If I were to do it over from scratch at this point, I could probably do it in under an hour. But take your time and make sure you’re doing every step precisely. Here’s a video of what you will wind up with (this is not my video):
Also, once you have all the prerequisites done, updating a ROM is really easy. It should keep any data intact on your phone, and if you install the Google apps, you can allow it to back up all your installed apps automatically, so when you update and reinstall GApps, it will then automatically re-download and install all the apps you had installed before the update. Pretty sweet.
I have to say, I’m really loving Ice Cream Sandwich on the Atrix. There are some really great user interface improvements that make the phone a joy to use. Very happy that I took the time to go through all this – and I learned a lot, too.
But wait, there’s more!
After I got all this done, I found the Reloaded ICS mod here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1531222 with some additional info and screenshots here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=23711000#post23711000
Reloaded ICS adds some really great UI enhancements – in particular in the notifications area – all kinds of really great functionality in there. I highly recommend it. It’s installed the same way as CM9 and gapps – copy the zip to your sd card and install with Clockwork.
No Atrix?
Of course, CM9 is available for plenty of other devices. If you decide to get into this kind of thing, the XDA Forums are your best friend. If CM9 is available for your device, you’ll find out about it there.
Or you could get a Nexus S which always seems to get the latest android.
Yeah, if I wanted to pay full price for a new device every year. 🙂
I’ve got ICS running on my Xoom tab, as the CM9 nightly builds were faulty so I installed Kang’s build of ICS. No problems, everything works perfectly, in-fact, better than perfect. It feels like new device. 🙂 Keep on spreading the love!
I used iOS & Android on mobile (Sony Xperia Pro). But finally I lost both these expensive phones… finaly bought hecticaly as replacement Nokia 1800 – twice times. This device is cheap – costs only 19 GBP (20 times less!) – so… the phone is really great and does not bother my mind – no FB, Twitter, Photo uploaders (camera is not installed) and of course it’s missing the other brain melting/pocket draining solutions (so called apps). It makes me a bit more hungry to socialize in reality with real people instead of theirs digital statuses. I charge phone batery one time per 7 days – really important! 🙂
But I like Android very much – got installed and rooted on video media player – Cideko – excellent HD MKV player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWnhevM5rE – also cheap below 100 £… This device also is my local FTP server and collects data from multiple ipCams. Also use SSH Terminal to connect my Ubuntu on 46 inches TV SET :).
I think Android is sort of the future for small devices. Not going to buy Motoral Atrix – got too many broken devices in my bargain.
However raspberyypi is coming – http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
Love that all this stuff is possible. CyanogenMod and other custom roms and the community support and ability to tinker are major pluses that I rate with Android.
Only problem is finding reasonable priced devices with ARM7 processor (ie Flash and Corona SDK compatible) in the UK. Seems that most all the good prices are for ARM v6 and that is hard to work around (as it is hardware not software/firmware).
Someone made an ARM6 Flash plugin which sort of works but Corona is a no no unfortunately which is an odd choice of theirs as there are so many of these about.
I know I could buy an expensive model. But I always lose them or break them and anyway I like that my phone is something to stuff in my jacket and not have to worry about damaging it.
Can’t believe it was only 2 years ago, seems longer than that. You have to admit, judging the Android based on the very first flashship smartphone is going to be critical.
As Ted mentioned, there is certainly an entrance fee to developing on ARM7 devices, which is a must to stay current. Not to mention the extra costs if you want to incorporate multitouch, camera, gps, etc. Of course it’s a moot point compared to iOS, where there’s really only a few options as well.
Due to the cost of development, I’ve just use my personal phone and tablet (evo4g and nook color) as development devices, which hasn’t caused any issues (yet).
One other reason to really love Android is once you start interfacing with physical devices. Since there aren’t any proprietary connections, it’s much cheaper to get started building custom devices.