25
May
swype

Update 3: Swype has contacted us to clarify the following: 

Swype does not, and will not ever make money off of the data it collects from you.  They do not sell ads.  They do not sell information. The comment made on the CM review forum was a generalization about the larger Android app developer community, and in no way was intended to imply that Swype uses your data for ad revenue.

Update 2: Here's what Swype Community Representative Brian Resnik has to say about all this:

Swype Community Rep here (the guy who made the comments on Google Code).

Honestly, piracy is not our concern.

22
May
image
Last Updated: May 25th, 2011

Back in March we reported on a proposed patch to CyanogenMod that would allow users to deny apps access to certain permissions while retaining the connection to others. This lets users install applications they are interested in, while remaining mindful of their privacy.

Update: Indeed, the "faking data" patches did not make it into CM and probably never will - thanks to all who posted the correction, including the patch author. See this commit for more info.

Denying permissions unfortunately has a nasty side effect - they will cause applications that don't handle the situation correctly to force close. If an application does start force closing and you've revoked some permissions, you will see a special dialog to easily reset those permissions back to "stock" and give the app a second chance.

19
May
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What a week for Samsung Galaxy S family device owners! First, the Captivate was officially added to the list of devices supported by CyanogenMod, the largest Android ROM community in the world, and now not 1 but 3 more phones are following suit - the Galaxy S, the T-Mobile Vibrant, and the Sprint Nexus S 4G (crespo4g).

The news hit yesterday, but since no downloadable builds were available from the CM mirror network until late last night, we decided to wait until they're up.

Of course, support for these Android 2.3.4 "Gingerbread" (GRJ22) releases is right now limited to said nightly builds of CyanogenMod 7, which will graduate to release candidates and stables releases when the time is right and all but non-serious bugs have been ironed out.

18
May
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Galaxy S owners, you may have a reason for some early celebration. CyanogenMod 7 for the GS variants, which has been around in relatively unsupported early alpha stages for the last couple of months, has just gone quite a bit more formal with the introduction of the new "captivatemtd" device branch.

What does it mean? Captivate is the first device of the Galaxy S bunch to move to the official CM download area in the form of nightlies. Once the nightlies, which, as the word implies are rebuilt nightly, are stable enough to warrant a daily driver, you can expect to see a number of RCs (release candidates), culminating in a stable release.

07
May
android-tweak-20110201162950
Last Updated: September 3rd, 2011

It's that time of the week again folks - time to hit the polls. This week's question is one that'll allow you to express what you think an Android handset should let you do in terms of customization, modification, and other various tinkering (think rooting, custom ROMs, kernels, etc). Basically, we want to know how important it is for you, as a consumer, that your next phone be easy to customize. Or if that really isn't important at all.

Let us know in the comments what ROMs, rooted apps, and other goodies only available to the rooted/unlocked users among us that you just can't live without.

05
May
image

CyanogenMod 7.0.3, an incremental release for CM 7, is now live at cyanogenmod.com. While we're waiting for the official changelog from Cyanogen himself, I can tell you that it does not contain Android 2.3.4 (it's still based off 2.3.3) - that's been saved for CM 7.1 (if you can't wait for 2.3.4, you can update to it by using the nightlies). It does, however, contain important security fixes, among other things. We'll update this post as soon as we get the details.

Update #1: Here we go, the changelog is up - not much there, as you can see:

This update contains a bug fix for our update notification system, as well as an important security fix.

02
May
CyanogenMod-7

The LG G2x is showing up all over the place today, isn't it? This time it's joined by its cousin, the Optimus 2X, as they are both graced with the custom ROM goodness of CyanogenMod. Be warned, though - these are only nightly builds so they are not yet polished, final versions of CM7. They are however, official CyanogenMod builds from TeamDouche, not ported versions from other developers.

Now that you know what's up, you can grab the downloads from their respective threads over at XDA.

This article deals with a couple of advanced topics. If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terms, hit up our primers here:

G2x | Optimus X

25
Apr
CyanogenMod-7

The CyanogenMod crew seem to have had a pretty busy Easter weekend - first they released the pre-alpha for the Thunderbolt, and last night they dropped an update to CM7 for all other platforms. This update brings the current version of CyanogenMod to 7.0.2 and is primarily a bug fix release, but it is also the first "stable" release of CM7 that we've seen for the OG Motorola Droid.

Among the many bug fixes included in 7.0.2 is the GPS issue that EVO owners have been experiencing since the initial release of CM7. Some other common fixes include memory issues, status bar tweaks, and the inclusion of new CM community wallpapers (okay, that last one isn't really a fix).

24
Apr
htc_thunderbolt-577x4081

Yes, you read right - CyanogenMod 7 for the Thunderbolt. We're super excited, too, because we can finally get our Thunderbolt Gingerbread on! But, please be careful, this is a pre-Alpha release (that means the release before the release before the beta), so be careful. Here's what does not work:

-USB Tethering does not work.
-Phone Testing menu does not display correct radio options. If you play with it, you will have to relfash a Stock based rom to 4G back.
-Possible Data/Voice bugs and issues.
-Possible Mic issues on phone calls (try a reboot)

This is basically saying your Thunderbolt might not work very well as a phone.

10
Apr
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CyanogenMod, or simply CM, is hands down the largest and the most widely used Android custom ROM family on the planet, with support for 30 devices, both tablets and phones, from hundreds of developers all over the world. Over the past 4 months, these developers have been sweating day and night upgrading CM6's Froyo codebase to Gingerbread, and today CM7 is finally fully baked.

Most CM 7.0 mirrors are already up (with the rest going up shortly), so if you are anxious to try out the version for your device, head over to the CyanogenMod Stable Downloads page and download away.