CyanogenMod, the popular custom ROM for Android phones, has just reached 5 million users! Raised from humble beginnings, their official statistics page now proclaims that their total install count has reached 5,078,265. That figure can be further broken down to 1,884,054 officially recorded installs while the rest equates to 3,194,211 unofficial installs from outside developers working off the original model.
One of the more prominent developers is a company called Nightly, who make the most popular CyanogenMod 10 version of the ROM for Jellybean, which is followed by Nightly’s earlier versions of CyanogenMod 7 and 7.2.0 for Gingerbread.
In Case You Didn’t Know
For any who are unaware of CyanogenMod and its functions, think of your own handset and the internal capabilities that allow you to personally customize it. CyanogenMod is merely an aftermarket ROM that can be downloaded to take that customization a step further or merely approach it from a different perspective.
It allows anything from formatting the color layout of your phone, to an incognito browsing mode that deletes history and cookies after closing the tab. It also allows users to personalize their phones lock screen and offers various ingenious ways of navigating your phone from there with tools like image sensitive gestures that not only unlock the screen. It can even be programmed to open specific apps. For example, you can have your phone directly open your favorite weather widget by drawing a “W” on your screen.
ROM’s to Riches
The ROM is great for basic users and tech savvy ones alike, but clearly over 5 million people already know that.
CyanogenMod’s success is not unprecedented, but is still quite impressive for a custom ROM that does not come standard with a handset. While others attain staggering numbers over 10 million, they only reach such a goal through agreements with mobile developers and providers.
CyanogenMod is not a mobile standard, but instead the projects downloads are driven by word of mouth, namely through an ever growing community of users that simply want their phone to do more than what is natively offered.
We’d like to extend a huge congratulations to the CyanogenMod team! Keep up the great work!