AfterDawn: News

First Gingerbread ROMs hit rooted Android devices

Developers over at XDA-Devs having begun porting the Android Gingerbread SDK to phones other than the Nexus S.

Google revealed the Nexus S on Monday, the first smartphone to run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread).



A number of popular smartphones have been promised the 2.3 update, such as the Droid, Droid 2, G2 and Galaxy S but the timetable for those updates is still unknown.

For now, rooted devices can boot Gingerbread but otherwise the ROMs are not useful.

Says the Dev site: "Please keep in mind that these ROMs are only for testing and playing purposes. These are not meant for daily use – these are all SDK ports so basic functions won’t work properly. These ROMs only boot, and they only show you the Gingerbread interface. Nothing more. You can’t do anything with it."

The following phones have these "play" ROMS:

HTC HD2
Droid Eris
HTC Hero
HTC Hero (CDMA)
HTC Desire
HTC Wildfire
HTC EVO 4G
HTC Incredible
HTC Sapphire

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 Dec 2010 20:02

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• 7 comments

• KillerBug

  Already old news.

  12.12.2010 21:40 #1

• Joshewah

  Keepin' my Hero alive till I can upgrade in April. Love those ROM cookers.
  

  X360 - iXtreme1.4 ||| Xbox - EvoX Dash ||| PS2 - CC 2.0 PRO SLE ||| Dreamcast ...lol ||| NDS - Acekard 2/M3 Simply/EZ Flash 3-1 ||| Rooted HTC Hero with Ic3rom

  13.12.2010 00:20 #2

• KillerBug

  From what I hear, gingerbread is not a good OS anyway...it really offers nothing new except for a few GUI elements that are already in the baked Froyo ROMs (and a few things that google says are required on tablets, in spite of all the tablets that work perfectly using Froyo). On top of that, it needs about 3x more ram to run, so it runs like garbage on phones with 256MB (many 256MB phones are less than a year old), and it runs slower than Froyo on the latest phones with lots of memory.
  
  This seems to be the android pattern... 2.0.1 was good, 2.1 was crap, 2.2 is was good, 2.3 is crap, let's hope 2.4 is better...because this gingerbread tastes very bad.
  
  [edit]
  Anyone else remember 6 months ago when the Froyo rollout was a complete disaster from the logistical standpoint? Google specifically said that Gingerbread would be released on every device that could support it within a week or two of the first device getting it. They promised us that we would get updates quickly because there would be no custom UIs or other crap for the manufacturers to add. They said that the OS would be more efficient; coming to every device with an official Froyo, plus some that were not up to the task of running Froyo...now they have released it, it is slow, it runs only on a handful of devices, and they refuse to release the official updates for these devices...there isn't even a Droid 2 update!
  

  13.12.2010 04:55 #3

• Zshazz (unverified)

  Originally posted by KillerBug: From what I hear, gingerbread is not a good OS anyway...it really offers nothing new except for a few GUI elements that are already in the baked Froyo ROMs And the bug fixes and even a fairly severe bug was fixed which could be used by malware writers to write apps that could be used to change system settings without the user's knowledge. And the updated copy-paste. And the updated keyboard (which I put on my Droid... it's pretty good!) They also updated the integrated Application Control "app" ... Also, what about the integrated SIP functionality? That's kinda nice. And the downloads manager is a welcome addition. I kinda disliked the old way downloads was handled. Also, they added audio effects API (like EQ and such) which people have been asking for.
  
  I guess you could also say the new gmail, new google maps, updated google voice search, etc. are Gingerbread... but Google kept their promise to detach those updates from the OS so that older versions could get them.
  
  Sounds like you really aren't giving Google credit for this update to me >_>
  
  Quote:On top of that, it needs about 3x more ram to run, so it runs like garbage on phones with 256MB (many 256MB phones are less than a year old), and it runs slower than Froyo on the latest phones with lots of memory. How would you know that? It's not even on any phones yet, save for these SDK images which have always been spotty. Even the Froyo ones sucked.
  
  Quote:This seems to be the android pattern... 2.0.1 was good, 2.1 was crap, 2.2 is was good, 2.3 is crap, let's hope 2.4 is better...because this gingerbread tastes very bad. You didn't like 2.1's live wallpapers, critically acclaimed 3D Gallery, voice-to-text (which is the way I most prefer to input text now), Google Earth, having your contacts automatically accumulate from various sources (such as Facebook and such), and other various things?
  
  Come on, please... that was a great update. Your memory must be failing you. So far, every update has been good. I will admit that 2.2 was comparatively better since they added Chrome-to-phone, the new JIT compiler, and started to detach the various apps from the OS so they'd get updated more often. But that's a far cry from the other updates being "crap".
  
  Quote:Anyone else remember 6 months ago when the Froyo rollout was a complete disaster from the logistical standpoint? Google specifically said that Gingerbread would be released on every device that could support it within a week or two of the first device getting it. They promised us that we would get updates quickly because there would be no custom UIs or other crap for the manufacturers to add. And stop right there. They said that they'd give Gingerbread such a great UI that manufacturers wouldn't feel the need to put their own UI on it. Because manufacturers wouldn't have to update the UI, their theory was that the manufacturers would have no reason to hold up updates. However, manufacturers were like "lol, no, we're putting our UIs on there no matter what."
  
  Granted, the UI wasn't exactly revamped. It's some nice improvements, but not a revolution by any measure. My speculation: Google pushed the major UI updates to Honeycomb since manufacturers weren't going to play ball anyway. Hence Gingerbread is 2.3 and not 3.0 like originally thought.
  
  Quote:now they have released it, it is slow, it runs only on a handful of devices, and they refuse to release the official updates for these devices...there isn't even a Droid 2 update! It's not out on those phones because the manufacturers haven't released them yet and it doesn't mean that they will or won't... they just haven't yet.

  13.12.2010 09:20 #4

• Joshewah

  Yes, I remember Google saying no more custom UIs. I prefer vanilla AOSP roms, so until 3rd pary UIs go away I will always root and flash vanilla ROMs.
  

  X360 - iXtreme1.4 ||| Xbox - EvoX Dash ||| PS2 - CC 2.0 PRO SLE ||| Dreamcast ...lol ||| NDS - Acekard 2/M3 Simply/EZ Flash 3-1 ||| Rooted HTC Hero with Ic3rom

  13.12.2010 12:45 #5

• KillerBug

  I had voice search on 2.0.1, and I have almost every gingerbread feature you listed on froyo...and yes, I hated 2.1; even heavily baked and trimmed roms were slow and buggy. I cannot exuse google from the phone support thing. Aside from the fact that it needs too many resources to run on most phones, they should provide their own support. When microsoft makes a new os, they include drivers for the most commons parts and systems...a heavy task for pc hardware. Google could easily do the same, task made much easier by the limited bumber of android phones, and the even more limited number of phones with enough system resources.
  
  I don't say these thing to bash google...they have a great product; the best in my opinion. I say these things because I dispair to see them shooting themselves in the feet.

  13.12.2010 13:17 #6

• plazma247

  Aherm i saw a gingerbread post on xda for the desire (pre-official release) rom about a month ago.
  
  Your right killer 2.4 or what ever comes next should be better, google appear to have this major release then fix rotation upgrade pattern.
  
  However as 2.3 will be the first time the UI is focused point of the upgrade, prior to that 2.2 had focused on sorting out a few issues and teathering etc (mostly all functional fixes / updates)
  
  So far from what ive seen from 2.3 im in love with the power down screen and would upgrade to droid just for that lol :-p im cheap i know, you dont need to tell me.
  
  However having had used every phone os out there with the execption of the now hp owned web os, i still prefer droid over any of the others.
  
  Yes 2.3 is going to hog memory and focus's heavily on nice little fancy things... However if you remember that by this time next year most of new lines of smart phones are going to have dual cores and more ram than you can shake a stick at, i think google may have tried to future proof the os by making it require more grunt (ie they dont plan to return to the ui in a big way in the next 12 months. However that said, i pretty sure like droids before you will be able to turn off the extended animations for ported devices so it doesnt try and eat your cpu every time the screen refreshes lol.
  
  Its funny watching the smartphone story unfurl, i remember when all the late night hacks i knew ran wm6.5, then came the apple into the garden, it tempted many away, a few like me held out to temptation until i eventually gave into taking a bite out of a donut. But here is the funny thing, when windows mobile died the death initially two things happened:
  
  1. Everyone swore they would never use another microsoft phone again after the years (YES YEARS) of failed promis of upgrades and user interface impovements.
  
  2. Everyone split and went off in many directions, bolds, apples, droids, etc.
  
  NOW here is where recently it gets intresting, all of them are starting to find common ground again and virtually all have gone droid. Those who arnt will be soon as their contract finishes.
  
  This says to me google, from the stand point of the more advanced users have got it spot on, they allowed the rich enviroment of xda and other modding sites to continue and made an os where your skill are really the only limit to modding, whilst capturing the intermediate and novice users which would have never used windows mobile but wanted something simple. Apple proved people would use smartphones if you made it easy enough.
  
  Apple appears to be at war with most of its users and developers trying to tell them the apple vistion of the future, which basically equates to apple milking the general public dry and i really belive people now realise they really shouldnt have eaten the forbidden apple.
  
  Blackberry some how has survived with its crack fleet of crack berry users who belive you can only email from a blackberry, in all fairness to them they have actually made some good phones, its just a bit of a shame none of them run droid or can use email without passing all your important things to blackberries email servers for them to read... i belive they have seriously made a bad decission by avoiding to dip their toe into droid, i hope they dont manage to do a nokia over the next few years. I understand why they havent but i dont think they made the right choice.
  
  Nokia, well thanks to supporting their own os for all this time manged to kill their own business almost dead, i dont even know a nokia owner anymore, lol they used to be a day when most were nokia, as far as they eye could see.
  
  Palm, well they sorta of had the right idea and made something that worked well, but alas it hit market as the iphone got into full swing and it hit them for six, HP i think plan to use its for tablets and know its to late to make a smartphone with it.
  
  Windows Mobile / Windows Phone
  Microsoft really lead the way with smart phones for many years and probably by luck more than anything. However because they didnt see anyone other than a small group ever wanting a smartphones, they never took it seriously enough. Which i think they know was probably one of the biggest mistakes they ever made. Windows phone 7 i think will prove to be to little to late and ok they will manage to ship some devices and probably mostly to business due to exchange and other microsoft friendly tie ins. But look at the Kin... that lasted really long
  
  So lets see what happens, who knows, has anyone else seen this trend or maybe you have noticed something else ?

  14.12.2010 11:12 #7