Today, Google has finished up the Android 4.2.2 rollout, which included uploading the new binaries for all supported Nexus devices. Today, we saw the Nexus 4 (mako) and Nexus 7 3G (tilapia) binaries for Android 4.2.2 added to AOSP (Android Open Source Project). Basically the binaries contain the hardware drivers that aren’t available in AOSP for their specific devices. This time we’re getting Android 4.2.2 (build JDQ39) and it’s out for the entire Nexus family. Which includes the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, Nexus 7 3G, Nexus 4, and Nexus 10.
More important than just having the binaries available, this also marks the first time that up-to-date binaries have been posted for all currently supported Nexus devices. Now as you might expect, this is a pretty big deal. Previously the Nexus 4 was making steps into AOSP, but wasn’t quite there. Now both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 3G have their binaries available.
Another note that Jean-Baptiste Queru made in his Google Groups post today, is that they’ve also tweaked the froyo, gingerbread and ics-mr1 branches so that they are now able to be compiled in Ubuntu 12.04. But how many devs are using or building off of Froyo (Android 2.2), Gingerbread (Android 2.3) or Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)?
This isn’t a big deal for most users, but those developers out there cooking us some awesome ROMs will really appreciate this news. As it will help them bake even better ROMs for us all to use everyday. If you know what you’re doing, you’ll find the links to the binaries for all Nexus devices down below.
It’s pretty amazing that all currently supported Nexus devices have binaries available now. That’s definitely good news for those of us with Nexus devices. Now to wait for these awesome ROMs to start improving even more. But is that possible? Do we have any ROM developers out there? Hit up the comments below and let us know if you are one and what ROM you currently work on.