If you’ve spent any amount of time on XDA, you’ve heard of XDA Recognized Developer Cyanogen or the nearly ubiquitous CyanogenMod. In fact, chances are that at you’ve either run CyanogenMod on one of your devices at some point in the past, or you’re running it (or a kanged version) now. In many ways, CyanogenMod represented all that was good about Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and proceeded to go where the carriers and manufacturers were unwilling to take their devices. Along the way, Cyanogen inspired developers everywhere to reach for what was previously lacking in the Android community.

Cyanogen also saw an emerging trend which he wasn’t too happy about – the term “chef” being applied to the Android custom development scene, along with the emergence of the so-called “WinZip ROM.”  So he created a thread back in 2010 to speak to this emerging trend and offer up some advice. The overriding theme was that contributing quality was far more important than contributing quantity on XDA.

He had this advice to offer for those looking to make their own Android ROMs:

Stop. Write an app or two first, learn how the system works from a developer standpoint. Learn some Java. Read the developer documentation. Learn how to use Git. Then learn how to build AOSP from source. Read the porting guides, and learn how the build system works….. Now try to put your new found skills to work on enhancing the platform by writing code or making theme overlays. And share! And put that s**t on your resume. There is a *ton* of information out there but any kind of “step-by-step rom cooking guide” is going to be a complete fail- it’s too broad of a subject.

As XDA has grown right along with the meteoric rise of Android, so has a desire of users to create their own ROMs, kernels, themes, and so on. Much of this work classifies as “original development,” but there’s been a growing trend to what many are calling “derivative development.” This category covers most of ROMs based on stock releases from the manufacturers, applying patches and scripts aimed at optimization, theming and/or removing stock applications, and using “kitchens” that run a stock release through a list of scripts and then repackage as a recovery-flashable update.zip. This is what Cyanogen was expressing frustration about—shortcuts being taken to achieve a product that differs only slightly from stock (derived) and pushed out instead of building from source and delving into the core of Android and making something truly original.

XDA-Developers exists first and foremost for developers. It’s at the core of who we are; it’s in our blood; and it’s in the air we breathe. There is a place for derivative works—they provide an entry to the scene which can help to introduce people to the wonders of Android. But let’s not stop there. Don’t be satisfied with just creating yet another derivative of someone else’s work. Instead, follow Cyanogen’s sage advice and learn about Android from the ground up, and create something truly original and innovative.

Here are some locations to help you on the path to learning about Android and contributing to the community as a whole:

• Android Developer Guides
• Working with Android Source
• Downloading the Android Source
• Git Tips and Tricks
• Building CyanogenMod
• Pro GIT Book

[Image courtesy of XDA Senior Moderator TheRomMistress.]

One of the best features of many T-Mobile phones is the ability to call people via WiFi. Why would you want to do this? Well, mostly because it doesn’t rely on your sometimes finicky mobile connection, instead using WiFi to place calls. Most can imagine why T-Mobile users who had it previously would be a little upset over not having it work properly on their favorite ROM.

HTC Sensation users have faced this problem. Luckily, however, it has been solved for both AOSP and stock ICS ROMs. The apk was modded and re-released by XDA Senior Member bigmoew for users to have in case their ROMs didn’t already come with it and for developers to include in their ROMs should they want to include it.

The app comes in the form of a recovery-flashable update.zip file, so there’s no difficulty in installing it. However, users must first remove any previous versions of WiFi calling they may have installed. Installation through recovery is required because it includes libraries required to make it run properly, which is especially true for AOSP users. And because there are two versions of the app—one for AOSP and one for stock—practically all Sensation owners on ICS can join in on the fun.

For additional information, hit up the original thread for all the download links and instructions.

Two things many mobile users are always in search of are a good sports app and a rule book for their sport of choice. While there are many sports applications for users to select from, most cover only the American “big four”—hockey, (American) football, basketball and baseball. Some people perhaps want to know more about the international ping pong scene, and let’s not forget about the awesomeness to be found in both rugby and soccer. And we swear, some ping pong aficionados can be quite passionate about their sport.

To paraphrase our unnamed arch nemesis, there’s an app for that. XDA Forum Member appzinventors has released an application called Sports Rules & News. The point? To cover the 12 most popular globally recognized sports, and provide users with all their associated rules. The supported sports are: football (soccer), cricket, tennis, Formula 1, golf, rugby, basketball, baseball, badminton, volleyball, table tennis, and hockey.

The news section includes useful information such as scores from various matches, but the meat and potatoes of the application is its built-in rule book. No more Google searching looking for random rules from random sports—simply open the app, and go find it. It’s a dream come true for hardcore fans of any of these sports, especially those who like shouting at referees through televisions because that hockey hit clearly violated Rule 48 and was, in fact, a check to the head.

For more information,visit the original thread and get your sports on.

It’s been hardly no time, and already developers here on XDA are finding ways to make the already powerful HTC EVO 4G LTE even faster and achieve better battery life. While the bulk of development is still ahead, some luck in creating custom recoveries can flash kernels despite not having true S-Off has helped things along. Overall, the horizon looks really good for Sprint’s newest flagship phone. And this is all despite Apple’s attempt to prevent it from coming to the States.

XDA Recognized Developer -viperboy- has released a mod that will keep the 2nd CPU in the dual core phone on all the time, which originally gained popularity on the HTC EVO 3D. The mod is easy to install. Users need to be rooted with a custom recovery, as it comes in the form of a recovery-flashable update.zip. The modification itself is an edit to an init.d script that basically turns the 2nd core of the CPU on at boot by modifying /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online, and keeps it on by making the value read-only until the next boot. To verify that the flash worked and everything is working, -viperboy- recommends:

You can also verify this is working by any number of apps, but I find SystemPanel to be the best. They have a free lite version. Just download and tap on the top right where the CPU info is. You will the the CPUs changing, when it goes grey it’s offline (which you won’t see when using the Dual Core Mod)

Those interested should head on over to the original thread for all the info.

The tires squeal under the pressure of the Mustang coming to a rapid stop. Agent Will Verduzco leaps from the car and runs towards the ally. Behind him, a black sports utility vehicle speeds around the corner and stops short of the still idling Mustang. Two men in black suits exit the sports utility vehicle with their Glocks drawn. Will turns brandishing his Smith & Wesson and unloads two shots, causing his pursuers to take cover behind a mailbox. While his pursuers are ducking, Will turns down a dark ally and jumps behind a dumpster. He pulls out his stolen prototype Samsung Galaxy S III and opens up his Garble App and quickly types his message. Sending his text he shoves his phone into his pocket and starts running. The men in black suits round the corner to the ally. One man grabs the radio from his belt and shouts, “He sent a message, intercept it.”

“On it,” responds a mousy man in thick glasses in a black van a few blocks away. He begins typing away at this computer console. Glasses man intercepts a message. On the computer screen the message displays, “8dR+wuQng7M4ORuS5Cuozk4IAVXz7gAp9DY9IsFP6A=”

“It is encoded but it is base64, so I will try and break it.” Glasses man relays over the radio.

Will jumps up onto a garbage can and leaps towards the bottom of a metal fire escape. He pulls himself up and climbs to the roof. He rushes across the roof and leaps to the adjoining building. The clank of metal alerts Will to the location of his pursuers. Will shoots the lock on the roof door, yanks open the door and runs down many flights of stairs.

The two men in black suits jump to the second building and rush towards the stairs door. They enter and look down the stairwell and see Will exit on the ground floor.  Skipping every other step the men in black suits race down the stairs. A noise emanates from outside. They reach the ground floor and kick open the door. A bright light illuminates the building’s parking lots, dust swirls around and the noise has gotten louder. A bullet explodes on the door frame next to our men in black. They recoil into the stairwell and watch and Will closes the door on a black helicopter and flies away. The radio squelches with glasses man’s voice, “The Message was ‘Extraction 1455329.’”

…

Now while we here at XDA don’t recommend that you use the Garble application for spy games, it’s a fun, useful, and interesting application for your Android device running 2.2 or higher. Of course, the longer your password the more secure it is, but we recommend you read up on base64 if you are really concerned about privacy of your text messages. You can even save the passwords in a list ordered by names. Application developer minooch explains the ease of use of his application.

1) Enter some text
2) Type a pass phrase
3) Garble it
4) Share it

For more information check out the application thread.

The biggest advantage that GSM devices have over CDMA devices is the ability to switch from one carrier to the next, relatively painlessly and without always needing to switch your phone. Making the phone capable of that jump is commonly referred to as SIM unlocking the device, meaning you remove the carrier lock on the device which in turn allows it to accept SIM cards from any other carrier that uses the same frequencies. Technical details aside, users of the HTC Holiday, HTC Raider and HTC Vivid can now get in on the carrier swapping goodness, as they can now be SIM unlocked.

XDA Recognized Contributor cruzin_cruzing has posted a method that was originally created by XDA Senior Member sieempi for three other similar HTC handsets. The method itself routes users to sieempi‘s website, where some information needs to be entered. From there, a modified Config.dat file is emailed to the user. Users then put that on the root of their SD cards. From there, it’s booting into the bootloader, selecting the SIMLOCK option and awaiting the proper output.

At the end of it all, users should have a fully and completely unlocked phone ready for use with any carrier on compatible bands. The whole process takes only a few minutes and is rather simple. You will, however, need a SIM card from another carrier to verify that it has indeed worked.

To get started, head over to the original thread.

It’s no surprise that the Facebook app is one of the most downloaded apps in the entire Google Play Store. Over the last year, we have seen many advances in Facebook and its mobile application. Many changes have been implemented to make the users’ mobile social experience richer, most recently with the purchase of photo-sharing competitor Instagram and the split of the app into the core Facebook app and the optional Facebook Messenger and Facebook Camera apps. While some users love the new changes and others can’t stand them, one thing is clear; Facebook is doing everything they can to advance their mobile platform and maintain their presence on Android and iOS.

The rumor mill is on fire right now with talks of an upcoming Facebook phone, which is supposedly coming next year. While it’s no secret that Facebook, shortly after becoming a publicly traded company, brought in a group of engineers to help design some as-of-yet unknown hardware and software, the biggest break in the development of the device may come soon. Facebook is looking to purchase Opera, one of the most widely used web browsers available. In addition, Facebook and HTC have partnered to create a new device, currently code-named “Buffy”, that many believe will be the official Facebook handset, running a Unix OS and featuring Opera’s mobile browser.

Another entry in the smartphone OS category may not be a good thing for the industry, but it makes sense for Facebook to compete with Google to more easily charge for apps or use their in-site currency (which is a large portion of the company’s income). So what do you think? Would you buy a *nix-based, Opera-running, Facebook-centric device? Drop a comment and let us know, because if things work out for Zuckerberg and the Facebook crew, we’ll see it released sometime next year.

Last year at Google I/O, Google released the Android Accessory Development Kit. And yesterday we gave a brief primer on the options available for those looking to get started with the ADK. Arduino is the foundation which the Google ADK is based upon. In this video, XDA Elite Recognized Developer AdamOutler demonstrates setup and use of an Arduino.

To start things off, AdamOutler shows us how to use an Arduino board to make a LED array. He then programs the board to flash the LEDs making an awesome flashlight-like device. Finally, AdamOutler shows us another option for an Arduino. Developers looking to get into making accessories that interface with mobile devices or just tinker with some really cool stuff should check out the video below.

This video is part 3 of a 4 part How to Build an Android App series.  Be sure to check out the following videos before the final episode of the series:

• How to Build an Android App Part 1: Setting up Eclipse and Android SDK
• How to Build an Android App Part 2: Writing a Root App

For more information on Arduino check out their website.

Make sure to check out he Samsung Smart App Challenge 2012!

Developers, start your engines. Or your computers. Or whatever you need to start to get ready to develop things. It seems that with every release of a new Xperia device, that device is immediately stripped down and ported to every other Xperia device out there. This is interesting both because of the inherent difficulties in porting proprietary components and also because when something new is released, everyone gets something new. And for anyone looking forward to checking out everything the Xperia Pro has to offer, you’re in luck.

XDA Senior Member ameer1234567890 has leaked the latest ICS firmware goodness for the purposes of development. The firmware is for developers only, so attempting to flash this without modification on your device will not work. The release also includes the kernel and the ramdisk as well. The full package includes:

This is the latest ICS build for Xperia Pro from EMMA – SE external testing software.
It’s of use only for developers, as it’s boot, system, etc packaged into one file (there is
info around on how to unpack it) and by default it can’t be flashed on non-brown (not
developer) phones.

For additional information, head over to the original thread.

Recently, a popular TvTropes application called Droid Tropes was laid to rest, and users were not happy about it. There was a large gap in the Android world for those with an addiction to Tropes that had to be sated on a mobile device. And when there’s a gap, someone eventually comes along to fill it. This would be XDA Senior Member Ambious with a new application called Android Troper. As Ambious explains:

With the recent unfortunate demise of “Droid Tropes”, the (thusfar) only “TvTropes” app, I was feeling in need. I also wanted to learn how to write Android apps.
So I created “Android Troper” (originally named “This Troper” and re-named due to community objections), and while it’s still very primal, I’ve decided to let it go ‘Beta’ and release it to the world for testing.

Some may be wondering what exactly a TvTrope is. From the official website:

What is this about? This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction. Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means “stereotyped and trite.” In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

The wiki is called “TV Tropes” because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere. We are not a stuffy encyclopedic wiki. We’re a buttload more informal. We encourage breezy language and original thought. There Is No Such Thing As Notability, and no citations are needed. If your entry cannot gather any evidence by theWiki Magic, it will just wither and die. Until then, though, it will be available through the Main Tropes Index. We are also not a wiki for bashing things. Once again, we’re about celebrating fiction, not showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.

Despite being a little green in development, Ambious actually does a pretty good job filling in where the predecessor left off, and users can get their Trope time in once again. The app, as mentioned, is a little rough and still has a few bugs. These range from lacking a dedicated menu button on ICS devices without a menu button and a lack of a centralized error handler. Ambious is working on these issues, so patience for those who happen to fall into those categories. Otherwise, though, the app works splendidly, especially for being just a beta release.

For additional information, hit up the original thread.