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PSA: Google Play Services Wakelock Affects Many 5.x ROMs
Google Play Services drains batteries with wakelocks on custom 5.x ROMs. Here are the fixes from Cyanogen and the dev community in a nice, neat roundup.
Wakelocks are the bane of the battery conscious, and this wakelock bug has been plaguing Android ROMs for a while. Yes, the issue is neither new nor unique, and it won't be resolved for good until Google steps up, but the recent launches of CyanogenMod 12 and CyanogenOS (among others) have prompted a new round of interest in the Google Play Services 7.x SystemUpdateService Wakelock bug. The good news is that CM12 saw a fix folded in yesterday, and CyanogenOS should be patched by next week. The bad? Every other ROM maker still needs to account for the newest issue, and the root cause is as buggy as ever. This is not the last time we will have this conversation, but for now let's discuss the problem, point out the patches & progress reports, and bring our battery power back to fighting shape.
CyanogenMod 11 M10 Available for Supported Devices
CyanogenMod 11 M10 build is now available for download, and it brings new device support as well as privacy guard for NFC.
Summer vacation is over for most students out there, and it's the time to get back to reality. Developers of popular ROMs have also came back to work, and as a result, we have a new monthly snapshot build of one of the most popular custom ROMs, CyanogenMod.
HTC Desire 816 Gets Developer Treatment with Custom ROM, Recovery, and Kernel
The HTC Desire 816 has now received its first Custom ROM, Recovery, and Kernel! Get in on the development goods for this great phablet today!
In the last few days, we've talked about some fairly high end devices receiving official ports of popular ROMs or updates via OTA. Users of mid-range devices usually must be more patient when it comes to waiting for their devices getting developer support. Patience, however, is certainly a virtue.
Although there are dozens of great source-built, AOSP-derived custom ROMs available for the choosing, the most popular option is still undoubtedly the first large-scale project of its kind: CyanogenMod. Because of this, it's always quite exciting when official CyanogenMod support is extended to any particular device. Now we're happy to share that official support has been added for two new devices, with two more on the way.
Due to their bargain basement prices and high apparent value, it should come as no surprise that MediaTek devices are growing in popularity---especially in emerging markets such as India. But because of a frequent lack of GPL compliance and nonexistent developer openness, original development for these devices is slim to none.
Although only released last year, one wouldn't really say that the Sony Xperia M is a very distinguishable device, especially in the vast sea of Android phones. With some middle of the road specs including a 4-inch screen with 480 x 854 resolution, a dual-core 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB of ram, one will probably be forgiven to think that it's simply 'just' another Android device.
The Sony Xperia P is one of many mid-range devices released by Sony in 2012. Its relatively good specifications (ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 1GHz, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage) and low price made it quite successful in terms of user adoption. Initially, it was released with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but after few months, the phone was updated to Ice Cream Sandwich and then support was dropped.
One of the main objectives of newly released Android 4.4 was to make the system available for older devices with limited RAM. A few days ago, we mentioned that KitKat was successfully ported to Motorola Defy and few other legacy devices. Now, it's time to present another project for a phone that originally shipped with Android 2.2 Froyo in early 2011. That device is HTC Incredible S, which recently received an unofficial CyanogenMod 11 port by XDA Senior Member szezso.
Do you remember all the way back to Android 2.1 Eclair? Yes? Maybe? It was released back in January 2010---almost 4 years ago. The Motorola Defy shipped with that OS. And now, years later, the Defy received a fresh build of KitKat, making it one of the first devices with just 512 megabytes of RAM to get the OS up and running.