CyanogenMod’s decision to become a company has been very controversial, for one because they intend to ask developers to make their apps that get integrated into CM dual-license, and second, because now that they’re a company wanting to make ROM’s for OEM’s like Oppo and others, they won’t have that much time to focus on all the existent devices out there. They need to make sure everything is working perfectly for their OEM partner.
But that’s not really the problem of people who just want a functional and updated custom for their devices, is it? While there are many developers out there who build custom ROM’s for one specific device, most of those also base their custom ROM on CyanogenMOD. It’s good to have a base of open source software that works on multiple devices, because then they can take that and port it to similar devices more easily than starting from scratch for each device.
With CyanogenMod inevitably doing less and less of this kind of work in the future, there needs to be something that will replace it as the “defacto ROM” that multiple devices, that other developers can later take and put on specific devices that aren’t supported by the main community.
That’s where OmniROM comes to save the day. As it’s starting up, the main developers behind it are Xplodwild, Chainfire & Dees_Troy, all famed developers:
Chainfire is the guy behind SuperSU & rooting a heck lot of Samsung phones. The latest feather in his cap is RegionLockAway, an app to remove Region Lock on European Galaxy Note 3. Xplodwild is the guy behind Focal camera app and an ex-CyanogenMod team member. Dees_Troy is the lead developer of TWRP recovery which a lot of you custom rom users must be running on your Android devices.
It sounds like a very solid rooster to begin with, and I’m sure many other great developers will join them soon to maintain and develop a good community-driven ROM, that works for many devices, and can be ported to even more devices later on.
Unlike CyanogenMod, which at least until recently, it tried to stay as close to AOSP as possible, it seems that OmniROM intends to add all sorts of new features, like:
- Flippable Quick Settings
- Roadrunner mode
- Multi-window
- Daydream enhancements
- Integrated Performance Control
- Multi-workspace
- Color-changeable
- 3D depth Phase Beam
The team will start the work on OmniROM with the Android 4.3 code as the starting point, although I think they should’ve waited a bit more and just start with Android 4.4, but perhaps they already have a lot of Android 4.3 code in place, and they just need to work a little more on it to finish it. In that case it makes more sense, as long as they don’t delay the work on 4.4 too much. Hopefully we’ll all start to see the OmniROM ported to our devices soon enough.