If you’re someone that’s used an aftermarket Android ROM in the past, then you’ll no doubt be familiar with that this news means for Moto X Pure owners looking to get some aftermarket ROMs on their device. If not, here’s a little background; as Android is built upon Open Source software, when a company – in this case Motorola – ships a retail device using this software, they must release whichever modifications they made to get said Open Source software working on their device. This is often referred to as the kernel source, and for the most part only includes things like drivers which are incredibly important to get any software reliably talking to the hardware.
As Android Police is reporting, the kernel source for the new Moto X Pure has now hit GitHub. While many are still waiting for Motorola to deliver their devices – ourselves included – that won’t stop enterprising developers getting to work with this source code already. We’re sure that there are some looking at this to find some sort of new method to root the new Moto X or those planning some sort of new custom ROM for the device.
The Moto X series of devices have always been a strange product for ROM developers and tweakers as a result of Motorola shipping them with stock Android right out of the gate. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. Developers and tweakers will always find ways to take better advantage of hardware or to improve the overall experience even if in small, small ways. This is what Android is all about; flexibility and choice. You might have bought a device from Motorola, but you don’t have to use every single piece of software provided to you by them, and we’re sure there’ll be some custom ROMs launching any day now to deliver better speed, maybe better battery life or something beyond that. With this kernel source, we can be sure to see a good version of CyanogenMod launch for this real soon, and for a lot of users, that might be music to their ears.