The Five Most Popular Custom Android ROMs
A smartphone is almost indispensable to us today and Android smartphones dominate the market. However, the stock ROM provided by the manufacturer may not have all that a user may want to tweak the phone. So a custom ROM is the answer. Here are some reason
Android for mobiles is a huge success and it has more than 80 per cent of the world smartphone OS market share. The mainstay of the Android ecosystem is that it is open source. This induces developers and hackers around the world to try to port every major Android release to most of the popular OEM devices.
Why flash custom Android ROMs?
A custom ROM is nothing but a fork of the Android version that runs on your device. Its main benefit is that it removes unwanted apps that take up precious storage space. The other advantage is that your device can get the taste of the latest Android versions that the OEM may or may not release for the device. By using a custom ROM, you will have multiple options to tweak or unlock the potential of the device by overclocking, personalising themes, adding private browsing support and so on. The custom ROM option has given a second life to once-popular devices like HTC HD2. There are chefs who still cook all the different flavours of Android for this particular device. Some of the popular custom ROM providers support most of the devices available in the market.
Stock ROM or the ROM that comes along with the device can be backed up to restore it at any point in time. There are apps that do this job perfectly, like ROM Manager, Titanium backup, CWM recovery, etc. The backed up ROM can be flashed back to the device to claim warranty. In order to flash a custom ROM, it is mandatory to root/unlock your phone. There are instructions available over the Net on how to do the job safely. One such information hub is ‘xda-developers.com’ which provides information on rooting, unlocking and flashing custom ROMs on most of the devices.
Reasons for not flashing custom ROMs
Custom ROMs, though nice, have some drawbacks too.
Battery life: You have to choose wisely while flashing the custom ROM as most custom ROMs may not be optimised for your device and the ROM may use up your battery’s power faster than the original ROM.
Bugs: Some of the custom ROMs may have bugs and lots of issues that will make you want to get back to the original ROM. There are some ROMs that may not have been properly cooked and may result in force-closing of some apps and random rebooting of the device.
Five most popular custom Android ROMs
To avoid all these issues related to custom ROM, use some of the valid ROMs that have been well tested by the community and chefs to provide constant support. Some of them provide OTA support too.
Cyanogenmod
Cyanogenmod is one of the most popular Android Open Source Project (ASOP)-based custom ROMs. It runs on 5 million devices around the world. This ROM supports older devices and the latest ones. It is backed by numerous volunteers around the world. Most of the custom ROMs are cooked with Cyanogenmod as a base. Cyanogenmod takes the ASOP released by Google to the
open source community. The current and stable version of Cyanogenmod is 10.2.0.
Paranoid Android
Paranoid Android is another popular custom ROM available for most devices. It has a number of features and customisable options to redefine your device. Paranoid Android was one of the first custom ROMs to get a taste of Android 4.4 via ASOP. It has a unique feature that gives devices a phablet and tablet UI. Its main feature is the HALO and Pie with a unique interface. Hybrid mode helps to set an individual app to acquire a tablet or phablet UI. Installed apps privacy can be viewed and edited. This particular feature lets you control the security of the phone. Floating Mode opens a mini view of a selected app onscreen without navigating from the current screen.
Omni ROM and Kitkat
Omni ROM, also known as the ‘Open ROM’, is a newly started group that offers customised Android ROMs for most devices. It was started by some senior developers from Paranoid Android. They have released a 4.4 Kitkat custom ROM for over 30 selected devices. It began with Android version 4.4 and it offers support for a universal installer, over-the-air updates, more security features and a user-activated screen recorder. Recently, the group has started releasing nightly builds for some devices, which can be updated via OTA from the device itself. One feature I like about Kitkat is the ‘non-intrusive call’ that lets an incoming call appear as a pop-up at the bottom of the screen, which I can dismiss or choose to answer. It has all the basic security features, just as in Paranoid Android, and has made a good start with wide support from strong developers.
AOKP
AOKP (Android Open Kang Project) is purely based on AOSP. It cooks ROMs with the source code released by Google. It has a lot of cool features that are unique, like its unicorn logo. LED controls, a ribbon interface, custom toggles, vibration patterns and navigation are some of its cool features. It lets users change the navigation bar size, make it transparent and boot animation. Shortcuts of frequently used apps can be pinned to the navigation bar for easy and quick access. It has a ribbon interface with pinned apps that can be swiped from a particular side. Phablet, tablet and phone mode UIs are available just like with Paranoid Android, which is very useful when the device is in landscape mode. Vibration patterns can be set for each notification so that the user can identify it without looking at the phone. There is a feature called ‘Night mode’. Users can change the settings of the phone into night mode with one toggle. It also has some of the other common features available with other ROMs.
Carbon ROM
This is the last ROM in our list and has some cool features compared to the other ROMs mentioned earlier. It is based on the AOSP. It has the Carbon Fibers feature, which packs all custom ROM features in one place, under ‘ Settings’. You don’t have to unlock the device to start the torch app when needed; all you have to do is to ‘ long press’ on the lock screen to turn on the torch. ‘ Active Display’ allows checking of notifications as in Moto X devices. The brightness of the device can be controlled by just sliding across the notification area on the top side of the device, which is way cooler than standard toggle options. It has lots of options such as the ‘ Option Power’ menu, ‘ Quick launch’, a navigation ring, an expandable desktop, LCD density, an apps permission manager, etc. Most of the features listed are the same as Paranoid Android.