Android updates have always been a tricky thing. If you didn’t buy a specific device that was either denoted as a “flagship” device from a manufacturer or your phone is considered old, you likely won’t be receiving any major updates for the life of your phone. There are many reasons for this, but there’s not much you can do about it if you just want the official support. Thankfully the Android modding community is around, and custom ROMs can help alleviate the stress of never getting a newer version of Android. Custom ROMs are custom versions of Android that are tailor built to your phone’s specifications, usually by a member of the Android modding community. Arguably the most popular custom ROM series out there is CyanogenMod, which is updated nightly for most supported devices. Once enough bugs have been squashed on a version of CyanogenMod, it moves up to Release Candidate status, and then finally to Stable. Release Candidate builds are nearly guaranteed to be free of bugs, and include many final features that the CyanogenMod team has dictated to be put into the final build of the custom ROM. CyanogenMod 10.2 is based on Android 4.3, and while that’s a bit confusing it’s finally on track for receiving these Release Candidate builds for a little over a dozen popular devices:
HTC One (Verizon)
HTC One (GSM)
HTC One (T-Mobile)
HTC One (AT&T)
Samsung Galaxy S
Samsung Galaxy S (B)
Google Nexus 7 2013 (Wi-Fi)
HTC One X
Google Nexus S
Google Nexus 7 2013 (4G)
Samsung Captivate
Google Nexus 4
Acer Iconia Tab A700
This list is just the beginning too. As with any good CyanogenMod build, expect more devices to be added to this list as time goes on. We saw the very first nightlies make their way out in early August, and now with the end of November coming those devices can finally say they’ve received truly stable builds. We’ve also seen the release of the earliest builds of CyanogenMod 11, which is based on Android 4.4 KitKat, make an appearance on GitHub earlier this month. Devices that have official KitKat support are already growing, but for those that would never see KitKat, much less Android 4.3, this is your golden opportunity. The CyanogenMod team has created an installer to help guide you through the process and make things just a bit easier to get your phone updated, so why not head on over to the Play Store and check it out? If you’d rather do it the old fashioned manual way, here’s the official CM Release Candidate page. As always with custom ROMs, have fun and be careful, you could kill your device if you don’t know what you’re doing.