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My Biggest Problem with the Captivate - And It's Silly

First, let me say up front that I have the utmost respect for the developers in the Captivate forum. It's a handicapped device that has much more potential than I think we'll ever be able to tap, simply because there isn't much motivation for Samsung to fix its biggest issues. Let's face it: The things we like most about our favorite Android handsets are precisely the things that make them seem "too complex" to the non non-technical general public. I think that the Galaxy S line has been a huge dissapointment to enthusiasts, and a big "ooh, ahh" for the iPhone-types.
That being said, let me move on to my main gripe: Through my Droid Incredible, I fell in love with flashing ROMs. If it had a higher build number, I flashed it. And you know why? Because it was better a better build. Newer baseband versions fixed more problems than it caused. I could flash ROMs on a train versus needing to be at my desktop for an exhaustive multi-step shamble. And when ROMs were released from build to build, developers in general knew what to expect as far as results.
I simply can't say that that's true with the Captivate. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with this phone and it's idiocy. I hate having ROMs with "Beta 9.3.5" after their title. I hate that half of the releases are to take out some Samsung crap, replace it with some AOSP-like goodness, just to see what sticks.
Again, it's not a condemnation of the Devs. They have made this phone tolerable, which is no small task. I just think it's a sad state of affairs when an OS based on an open source foundation has been so brutally slapped together that it makes a phone with the looks and hardware specs of a Ferrari about as much fun to own and maintain as a Yugo.
Who's with me on this one?
EDIT:
I'm keeping my original post above, partly because there have been too many responses to make removing it reasonable, and partly because I'd like something to review the next time I decide to try and put my thoughts out there to the community.
I never imagined that I would draw so much criticism over this post. I honestly thought I did a pretty good job of making it apparent that I truly appreciate all of the developers' work. I'm a huge fan of the Android platform and of open source projects in general. Allow me to draw a poorly crafted and weak analogy, if I may:
I love my two-year old boy dearly. He's a fantastic kid and big bright spot in my life. He has asthma, and I really do hate providing his breathing treatments. It doesn't mean I'm not thankful for the technology that allows him to breathe, and I certainly wouldn't consider trading him in for a different model without such issues. I would, however, consider venting to other parents of an asthmatic child about how laborious the process of breathing treatments is, and how unfriendly it is towards children his age.
I'm not quite sure how I managed to come across as anti-open source, anti-developer, or at all unappreciative of our dedicated developers - but apparently that's exactly what I did, so for that I apologize. What is really awful is that with one well-intended post I feel that I have ostracized myself from a community that I thoroughly enjoy supporting.

So instead of being constructive... and building a ROM of your own or simply not using them, you're complaining? No one said you have to use them. No one said you have to update all the time.
Definitely not with you.

I think the fustration you're feeling is related to these only having being available to the masses for about 2 months. The modding community started with HTC phones, so they have the momentum. That being said the samsung community is making a lot of progress, and HTC/Samsung cross modding is in full swing. Be patient.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Thanks for your thoughts. I thought I had posted in "Captivate General", not "Captivate Troll." My mistake.
I have actually tried just about all the ROMs available. You may have noticed that I stated that this is not a Dev issue. I doubt many can do better than the talented developers we have here - I know I couldn't. Hell, even Samsung can't.
My point is that I think the Galaxy S line is a harbinger of things to come for Android. I hope I'm wrong, but as Android becomes increasingly mainstream, it also becomes increasingly less important to deliver function AND form.
The average consumer wants sexiness with phrases like "dual-core" listed in the specs, regardless of what the device can actually deliver.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

crayak said:
I think the fustration you're feeling is related to these only having being available to the masses for about 2 months. The modding community started with HTC phones, so they have the momentum. That being said the samsung community is making a lot of progress, and HTC/Samsung cross modding is in full swing. Be patient.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
You have a good point, and I have no problem waiting. I suppose I was just sharing my reflections.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I share you feelings somewhat. Thats why I picked a ROM (Cognition 2.1.6) and will stick with it until Froyo officially drops for the Captivate. I also hate having to restore a phone after a flash which is why I choose not to do it often.

vbhines said:
My point is that I think the Galaxy S line is a harbinger of things to come for Android. I hope I'm wrong, but as Android becomes increasingly mainstream, it also becomes increasingly less important to deliver function AND form.
The average consumer wants sexiness with phrases like "dual-core" listed in the specs, regardless of what the device can actually deliver.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
I actually agree here. But this is sort of Google's thing in a lot of areas. Google Wave, Google Buzz etc. Google MASTERS searching. And everything else they throw stuff on a wall and some sticks and some don't. I worried about that with Android from the very beginning. They often times release half finished products and then allow the devs to finish (or not in some cases) the future of the product/service.
By going to 100 different carriers in 100 different iterations google may very well stop caring about the polished product and just allow the devs to do the rest.

When I had my HTC Hero I had a Flash addiction. Now I just have decided to stick with one build and update it when updates happen. There have been quite a few VERY recent improvements. SetIron's kernel is a fine example. Stuff is happening at a much faster pace than it was when I got my phone 2 months ago. There are twice as many ROMS if not more. Things are going blow wide open when Official Froyo and its source code drop. I think there was stagnent developing at first because we all knew Froyo was coming. If we're lucky Froyo and Gingerbread will share the same kernel so porting IT won't be a big deal either.

FWIW, The Captivate hasn't been out anywhere near as long as the Incredible. Give the Devs some time - it can only get better.

rfarrah said:
FWIW, The Captivate hasn't been out anywhere near as long as the Incredible. Give the Devs some time - it can only get better.
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Click to collapse
I think his frustration is more that we have this incredible piece of hardware and the less than stellar job that Samsung has done to finish it off on the software side. If it wasn't for the devs/cookers I probably would have sold my Captivate by now, and I have only had it for 1 month, coming from a Milestone.
Samsung, hire some of these devs to fix your mess you call a kernel and os. Without the lagfixes from the devs this phone responds worse than my Milestone.

bradasmith said:
I think his frustration is more that we have this incredible piece of hardware and the less than stellar job that Samsung has done to finish it off on the software side. If it wasn't for the devs/cookers I probably would have sold my Captivate by now, and I have only had it for 1 month, coming from a Milestone.
Samsung, hire some of these devs to fix your mess you call a kernel and os. Without the lagfixes from the devs this phone responds worse than my Milestone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Thank you for saying what I was trying to, but in far fewer words.

the galaxy s phones might be the last of the phones not locked by the manufacturer. and i like the samsung software package but dislike that it only works if x or y componant is still there. i dont get the appeal of aosp for an every day rom but i get that it is a transition for porting other things, once we know what we need to make the phone work with aosp we can make it work with anything. and i think that people arent giving samsung enough credit for support on the device. the stock rom was buggy and jf7 came out and made things better, now we are waiting on froyo and im sure it will be better yet, if the the leaked copies are an indication then froyo should be quite good.
i think the multi step proceedures is dev preferance for clearing data, there have been roms that you can flash over and keep everything. the other issue is lagfixes which aren't available(or needed) on other devices. the lagfix is part of those oh sh!t moments where you need odin, also having odin available is another avenue for the devs. if we could only flash from recovery you would see alot more cockwork flashable roms that are compatable with multiple lagfixes.
i messed with an evo and really got an apreciation for samsung, i felt the evo was of low build quality and that odin flashing a rooted rom is much more convenient than the rage against the cage meathod of adb pushing files and rooting and recovery flashing. rooting a galaxy s is rediculously easy, just an update.zip, or an one click app on the phone, or a one click app on a pc. or for froyo a 3click kernel flash in odin then an update.zip. or flashing a rooted rom with odin.
i have made many noob mistakes and taken risks and got it running every time. i dont know about the incredible but i think with some other devices i would have either bricked or pulled all my hair out fixing it.
i was in the airforce and one thing that people always said was that the two best bases are the one you last came from and the next one you are going to. people were always telling stories about "back in kirkland...." and "when i get to misawa..." but people were always complaining about there current base. i have a fealing that in year or two when we have new phones we will see many thing we hate about those as well. and if we had motorolas we'd hate those and if we had incredibles we see the galaxy s playing asphalt 5 from samsung apps and be like if only my phone could do 3d like that one.

I have one issue with my phone, the GPS. While I'm mad it doesn't really work it's something I NEVER use. Other than that I'm running the latest Cognition rom and couldn't be happier.

gunnyman said:
.....Things are going blow wide open when Official Froyo and its source code drop. I think there was stagnent developing at first because we all knew Froyo was coming.
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Click to collapse
I think this is 100% the reason. I fully expect that there will be some amazing things done and some great roms released.
I don't know if it was mentioned or not already but the reason why there are so many beta versions of roms and why newer versions open up issues is for the same reason as above, no source code available. So be patient and I promise you'll be kicking yourself for making this thread.

I am not a programmer, just a user with some technical expertise, but I love these open source OS's. I jumped on Linux as soon as MS Vista came out and the improvements and leaps forward by that community on the desktops has been amazing. When I opened a Win7 PC for the first time, I realized Microsoft is now copying Linux, not the other way around. Just last week I looked at the new MAC OS and I wanted to scream that they were ripping off the XFCE GUI in Linux. Linux is leading the way in Netbooks now and embedded devices are now a focus. If you have ever flashed a router with Tomato, or one of the other Linux router OS's, you know what amazing things routers are now capable of. And then we have smart phones and make no mistake, Android is just Linux in a smart phone. We don't have to deal with a proprietary systems from MS or Apple, where you only get what they hand out to you. This is Burger King baby, you get it your way. Google may be the name on this open source OS, but it belongs to us all. Google can not take this OS proprietary. Yet any time we, the people, wish we can spin off another branch of development with those things we want. OS's like Meego (and I'm sure there will be others) should be able to be ported over, if we wish, in the near future. We may be looking at an era where we can truly buy the smart phone of our choice, install our OS of choice and choose our carrier of choice with ease.
Bottomline here is you can help. If you are not a dev, or a programmer, you can still contribute to this by continuing to use these builds, and report bugs, and you can contribute money to any of the open source efforts, particularly in areas where you want to see more effort. You don't have to sit on the side lines anymore and just whine about how you are getting the short end of the stick by the big corporations. Open Source belongs to us all, take ownership.

i dont think apple is really copying xfce. ..macosx versions are terminal based and therefor unix like and very similar to linux. x11 window environments have been around for many year. xfce doesn't offer that much that i know of that isn't in others window managers. it is possible that the developers on all sides are taking ideas from each other, but i think since power user often have a lot of shortcuts setup to get through common tasks faster that they are implementing some of these things as presets. similarities can just as easily similar minds overcoming very common problems. granted many developers may be running alternate os's and may be inspired by the other. not that i dont believe in corperate espionage i certainly do but i think a lot of things are just obvious solutions.
the problem with phones is that the manufacturers can lock us out and the locks can be difficult to break. you are right that google doesnt own the os but the manufacturers have proprietary source along side the source that they must release because it was taken from google. at some point it makes development dificult. i think we need an emphasis on aosp to build roms from. not because i like the google software, i find it plain and ugly, but because once aosp is figured out there is more understanding of how it all fits together and ports become easier.
i just cant wait to see the day when we can custom order aosp compatible hardware and build phones based on what our priorities are and what we can afford. i know we cant actually solder the boards our selves with surface mount but it could be done on an assembly line with robots if a manufacturer decided to use them to there full potential.

vbhines said:
Thanks for your thoughts. I thought I had posted in "Captivate General", not "Captivate Troll." My mistake.
I have actually tried just about all the ROMs available. You may have noticed that I stated that this is not a Dev issue. I doubt many can do better than the talented developers we have here - I know I couldn't. Hell, even Samsung can't.
My point is that I think the Galaxy S line is a harbinger of things to come for Android. I hope I'm wrong, but as Android becomes increasingly mainstream, it also becomes increasingly less important to deliver function AND form.
The average consumer wants sexiness with phrases like "dual-core" listed in the specs, regardless of what the device can actually deliver.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I couldn't agree with your more about your criticism about Samsung - but I'm not sure how this applies for Android as a whole. The closest thing you can say is Android fails to exclude poorly performing companies - but that's not much of a statement, is it?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

GreenWolf70 said:
I am not a programmer, just a user with some technical expertise, but I love these open source OS's. I jumped on Linux as soon as MS Vista came out and the improvements and leaps forward by that community on the desktops has been amazing. When I opened a Win7 PC for the first time, I realized Microsoft is now copying Linux, not the other way around. Just last week I looked at the new MAC OS and I wanted to scream that they were ripping off the XFCE GUI in Linux. Linux is leading the way in Netbooks now and embedded devices are now a focus. If you have ever flashed a router with Tomato, or one of the other Linux router OS's, you know what amazing things routers are now capable of. And then we have smart phones and make no mistake, Android is just Linux in a smart phone. We don't have to deal with a proprietary systems from MS or Apple, where you only get what they hand out to you. This is Burger King baby, you get it your way. Google may be the name on this open source OS, but it belongs to us all. Google can not take this OS proprietary. Yet any time we, the people, wish we can spin off another branch of development with those things we want. OS's like Meego (and I'm sure there will be others) should be able to be ported over, if we wish, in the near future. We may be looking at an era where we can truly buy the smart phone of our choice, install our OS of choice and choose our carrier of choice with ease.
Bottomline here is you can help. If you are not a dev, or a programmer, you can still contribute to this by continuing to use these builds, and report bugs, and you can contribute money to any of the open source efforts, particularly in areas where you want to see more effort. You don't have to sit on the side lines anymore and just whine about how you are getting the short end of the stick by the big corporations. Open Source belongs to us all, take ownership.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is one of the best posts I have read on this forum. What a great insight into the evolution of the smartphone, it damn near brought a tear to my eye and sure as hell made me proud to be an owner and defender of the ideal of Open Source. Sure, my Captivate isn't perfect, but I continue to try new ROM's and use my technical proficiency to try and reason out any bugs so as to provide useful feedback. In turn, these ROM's continue to get better and everyone profits.
I love you guys... *group hug*

Dani897 said:
the galaxy s phones might be the last of the phones not locked by the manufacturer. and i like the samsung software package but dislike that it only works if x or y componant is still there. i dont get the appeal of aosp for an every day rom but i get that it is a transition for porting other things, once we know what we need to make the phone work with aosp we can make it work with anything. and i think that people arent giving samsung enough credit for support on the device. the stock rom was buggy and jf7 came out and made things better, now we are waiting on froyo and im sure it will be better yet, if the the leaked copies are an indication then froyo should be quite good.
i think the multi step proceedures is dev preferance for clearing data, there have been roms that you can flash over and keep everything. the other issue is lagfixes which aren't available(or needed) on other devices. the lagfix is part of those oh sh!t moments where you need odin, also having odin available is another avenue for the devs. if we could only flash from recovery you would see alot more cockwork flashable roms that are compatable with multiple lagfixes.
i messed with an evo and really got an apreciation for samsung, i felt the evo was of low build quality and that odin flashing a rooted rom is much more convenient than the rage against the cage meathod of adb pushing files and rooting and recovery flashing. rooting a galaxy s is rediculously easy, just an update.zip, or an one click app on the phone, or a one click app on a pc. or for froyo a 3click kernel flash in odin then an update.zip. or flashing a rooted rom with odin.
i have made many noob mistakes and taken risks and got it running every time. i dont know about the incredible but i think with some other devices i would have either bricked or pulled all my hair out fixing it.
i was in the airforce and one thing that people always said was that the two best bases are the one you last came from and the next one you are going to. people were always telling stories about "back in kirkland...." and "when i get to misawa..." but people were always complaining about there current base. i have a fealing that in year or two when we have new phones we will see many thing we hate about those as well. and if we had motorolas we'd hate those and if we had incredibles we see the galaxy s playing asphalt 5 from samsung apps and be like if only my phone could do 3d like that one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GreenWolf70 said:
I am not a programmer, just a user with some technical expertise, but I love these open source OS's. I jumped on Linux as soon as MS Vista came out and the improvements and leaps forward by that community on the desktops has been amazing. When I opened a Win7 PC for the first time, I realized Microsoft is now copying Linux, not the other way around. Just last week I looked at the new MAC OS and I wanted to scream that they were ripping off the XFCE GUI in Linux. Linux is leading the way in Netbooks now and embedded devices are now a focus. If you have ever flashed a router with Tomato, or one of the other Linux router OS's, you know what amazing things routers are now capable of. And then we have smart phones and make no mistake, Android is just Linux in a smart phone. We don't have to deal with a proprietary systems from MS or Apple, where you only get what they hand out to you. This is Burger King baby, you get it your way. Google may be the name on this open source OS, but it belongs to us all. Google can not take this OS proprietary. Yet any time we, the people, wish we can spin off another branch of development with those things we want. OS's like Meego (and I'm sure there will be others) should be able to be ported over, if we wish, in the near future. We may be looking at an era where we can truly buy the smart phone of our choice, install our OS of choice and choose our carrier of choice with ease.
Bottomline here is you can help. If you are not a dev, or a programmer, you can still contribute to this by continuing to use these builds, and report bugs, and you can contribute money to any of the open source efforts, particularly in areas where you want to see more effort. You don't have to sit on the side lines anymore and just whine about how you are getting the short end of the stick by the big corporations. Open Source belongs to us all, take ownership.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
EsotericPunk said:
This is one of the best posts I have read on this forum. What a great insight into the evolution of the smartphone, it damn near brought a tear to my eye and sure as hell made me proud to be an owner and defender of the ideal of Open Source. Sure, my Captivate isn't perfect, but I continue to try new ROM's and use my technical proficiency to try and reason out any bugs so as to provide useful feedback. In turn, these ROM's continue to get better and everyone profits.
I love you guys... *group hug*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well said Androiders!
+10

Then go wait on the sidelines for a cyanogen port. We, galaxy s phone owners. Don't and won't need huge steps beyond what we have. Your expectations are limited to what your old phone needed to perform.
You are right its silly. And unnecessary. Find a new hobby if porting roms isn't doing it for you.
vbhines said:
First, let me say up front that I have the utmost respect for the developers in the Captivate forum. It's a handicapped device that has much more potential than I think we'll ever be able to tap, simply because there isn't much motivation for Samsung to fix its biggest issues. Let's face it: The things we like most about our favorite Android handsets are precisely the things that make them seem "too complex" to the non non-technical general public. I think that the Galaxy S line has been a huge dissapointment to enthusiasts, and a big "ooh, ahh" for the iPhone-types.
That being said, let me move on to my main gripe: Through my Droid Incredible, I fell in love with flashing ROMs. If it had a higher build number, I flashed it. And you know why? Because it was better a better build. Newer baseband versions fixed more problems than it caused. I could flash ROMs on a train versus needing to be at my desktop for an exhaustive multi-step shamble. And when ROMs were released from build to build, developers in general knew what to expect as far as results.
I simply can't say that that's true with the Captivate. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with this phone and it's idiocy. I hate having ROMs with "Beta 9.3.5" after their title. I hate that half of the releases are to take out some Samsung crap, replace it with some AOSP-like goodness, just to see what sticks.
Again, it's not a condemnation of the Devs. They have made this phone tolerable, which is no small task. I just think it's a sad state of affairs when an OS based on an open source foundation has been so brutally slapped together that it makes a phone with the looks and hardware specs of a Ferrari about as much fun to own and maintain as a Yugo.
Who's with me on this one?
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Click to collapse
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Why ICS is important to me.

Watch the video (In case you havent seen it yet!). In it Matias Duarte explains how the Android team is beginning to try and create a cohesive and unified atmosphere with the os at the most basic levels. I for one, am absolutely thrilled to see that they are finally going to be paying attention to design and aesthetics. Usability of the platform can also benefit from this immensely.
I am also tired of people saying "ICS isnt all that special". It really doesnt matter how "special" you think it should be. What matters is that its the next iteration of the os. We all want to have our devices updated and current. So wanting this on our devices has less to do with design in this sense, and a lot more to do with jumping on the wagon of unification. I would greatly prefer beautiful apps and ease of use over anything Gingerbread has offered us so far. Now I already know that a lot of the visual benefits of ICS come mainly from theming and such, but its profoundly more exciting when the theming itself is coming from the creators of Android and not some hard-to-find source in the app market.
Lastly, I would appreciate it if you guys could give your thoughts on this. Are you excited to see the new direction the Android team along with Matias, are going in? Do you feel that they are focusing on some rather important points in the software (usability, framework, aesthetics) or not? And of course please keep the flaming and crude/rude comments to yourselves. Thanks all for listening to my rant.
~~Vince
Heres the new design guidelines site they have up.

tazbo28 said:
Watch the video (In case you havent seen it yet!). In it Matias Duarte explains how the Android team is beginning to try and create a cohesive and unified atmosphere with the os at the most basic levels. I for one, am absolutely thrilled to see that they are finally going to be paying attention to design and aesthetics. Usability of the platform can also benefit from this immensely.
I am also tired of people saying "ICS isnt all that special". It really doesnt matter how "special" you think it should be. What matters is that its the next iteration of the os. We all want to have our devices updated and current. So wanting this on our devices has less to do with design in this sense, and a lot more to do with jumping on the wagon of unification. I would greatly prefer beautiful apps and ease of use over anything Gingerbread has offered us so far. Now I already know that a lot of the visual benefits of ICS come mainly from theming and such, but its profoundly more exciting when the theming itself is coming from the creators of Android and not some hard-to-find source in the app market.
Lastly, I would appreciate it if you guys could give your thoughts on this. Are you excited to see the new direction the Android team along with Matias, are going in? Do you feel that they are focusing on some rather important points in the software (usability, framework, aesthetics) or not? And of course please keep the flaming and crude/rude comments to yourselves. Thanks all for listening to my rant.
~~Vince
Heres the new design guidelines site they have up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't deny that I would be overly excited if ICS came to this device, haha.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda premium

Kevinr678 said:
I can't deny that I would be overly excited if ICS came to this device, haha.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
+1 internets I totally agree!

As nice as ICS's upgrade would be...it's not in Sammy's or AT&T interest
Sammy want's device sales and AT&T wants new/renewed contracts. By limiting ICS to 2012 devices, it provides incentive for 2010/2011 device owners to pony up for the new hotness with the new software.
Now before anyone wants to say, "WAIT WAIT, Apple..." save it. We're not talking about Apple here. Sammy is the OEM and they control what happens for the product line.
Sure you can wait for a dev to 'hopefully' get around to releasing an ICS port and yeah, it may be decent. That's your choice.
My upgrade plans begin in 2013 when ICS should have a few months in the wild and become more mature. By then all my smartphones will be eligible for upgrade discounts. I have no issue with AT&T's service as they allow me to keep my grandfathered unlimited data plan.
I'd rather have ICS when it's grown up and not so much a baby. Also, fully functional on my device too would be nice.

Interviewer is huge fan of Apple I can see

The main reason i want ics is so i can impress my friends lol. It also just has features that i just like better. Im not going to die without it, but it would be nice with it. Im sorry guys who have to wait for their contract, both my parents have their upgrades up and both are fine if they get my infuse, and i get the note.

durvall said:
Interviewer is huge fan of Apple I can see
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Click to collapse
Joshua Topolsky! My man! He was the senior editor at Engadget.com before leaving to start theverge.com. He actually left his Apple iPhone after the 3gs I think. He soon thereafter bought a Nexus One. Which I think he still uses to this day. And touts it every chance he gets. He does however praise apple for incitefull design and craftsmanship. I mean he is in a business (tech blogging) that is notorious for praising the behemoth company(not that this is a good thing) But trust you me when I say he isn't afraid to drop the hammer on Apple when he voices his gripes over their products. I would venture to say that most blogging sites require their employees to work on Macbooks now though. It seems to me that they would rather choose a totalitarian system like the Macs because they are less prone to buginess and viruses. And when your in an industry that thrives off of having secure data on close deadlines and less vulnerabilities, Macs (imo) just do it better. I dont use a mac, never have, I have had an Iphone 3g one time for a while. But will probably never go back. Unless I become rich or something. You do have to admire their design principles though both physically and software wise. When you compare Apple's aesthetics to Androids up till now, its just no-contest which is more cohesive and well thought out.

durvall said:
Interviewer is huge fan of Apple I can see
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Click to collapse
So is Samsung.
Sent from my SGH-I897

funny thing is I used to frequent a guitar forum and a well known member was a Samsung senior cdma systems engineer and his phone was an iPhone. that was before cdma iPhones existed so he was obviously on att which is big in texas. he didn't boast about apple too much nor Samsung, basically the only things I remember that stood out was he refuted the idea that the apple products have Good audio. said the newer apple products are not as good as the older ones and suffered from clipping (overdrive basically) and boasted the galaxy s in that area. but when it came down to it he was a fan of ios for the accessories and high quality audio software (garage band for the ipad) and got an ipad 2.

i always have an upgrade....(4 lines=leverage) .. but i will not purchase another phone until ICS is available, especially because of updates. i want the note..but if no ics pre-installed..i aint buying.. i almost went to verizon for the nexus but they dont have good coverage where i travel

ICS should be important to everyone. Even if only for the principle of it.
Sent from my SGH-I897

Anyone currently working on ics?
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dustinhayes93 said:
Anyone currently working on ics?
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yeah but they haven't posted progress so its anyone's guess as to what issues they are having. remember the people working on it have real lives and are doing it as a hobby. so i don't think anyone is working on it full time.

Yea of course. Its great to know it is being worked on. Anything is better than nothing!
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LinuxBozo still around? I had some questions for him..
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theROMinator said:
LinuxBozo still around? I had some questions for him..
Sent from my SGH-I997 using Tapatalk
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he drops in to a thread every once in a while especially the "all the devs jumped" threads. he was never that big on posting. I dunno if he answers pm's.

Dani897 said:
he drops in to a thread every once in a while especially the "all the devs jumped" threads. he was never that big on posting. I dunno if he answers pm's.
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Yes, he does. I've spoke with him before. I was just hoping he hadn't jumped ship.
Sent from my SGH-I997 using Tapatalk

theROMinator said:
Yes, he does. I've spoke with him before. I was just hoping he hadn't jumped ship.
Sent from my SGH-I997 using Tapatalk
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I don't think so. I know at one time he said he didn't like change.... whether he'll post work after his ics thread got trolled on I don't know.

theROMinator said:
Yes, he does. I've spoke with him before. I was just hoping he hadn't jumped ship.
Sent from my SGH-I997 using Tapatalk
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He will probably answer in this thread lol but he is. One of the leads with the infuse cm7 team. He has been busy with other stuff though (carpantry). He is around. Ics will come someday hopefully...

even though some people will drop their Infuse's this Spring, Im really hoping some devs will still try to bring over ICS for the people who want to feel out the year on devices. I wish I wasnt so disorganized, otherwise i might actually have the capacity to learn how to develop. =/

Since when did some XDA users become so soft?

I'll throw my two cents on the at&t jelly bean update.
As some of you can see, I've been on these forums for a VERY long time. I've seen the forums go from basically an HTC win-mo board to the amazing place it has become today. Sadly, it seems like people seem to come here to whine more then to either innovate or at least take control of their devices.
Yes it's frustrating that AT&T hasn't released the jelly bean update for our device considering the update has been out for nearly 5 months now. But at the same time, this is XD-freaking-A! Where if you want anything on your device (short of Google wallet apparently), you cane make it happen. Root your phone, unlock your bootloader, and enjoy your phone as you want to.
I remember when people wouldn't bat an eye to dropping $600-$800 on a HTC TyTn II and it would come with 850/1900 HSPA so you didn't have to get stuck with ATT's crap and terrible support.
Lets get back to enjoying our device, and if that means going the Nexus device and/or unlocked device route, so be it. Don't let the carriers control you.
The lesson as always: less whining, more hacking!!
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

Funny, I was just thinking along similar lines today. This board has changed a whole lot in the time I've been here. I also joined during the WinMo days, back with the TyTn II (AT&T Tilt). In those days, folks with smartphones were mostly early adopters. Sure, XDA existed long before that time, and there were even earlier adopters, by far. But back in 2007, smartphones and especially moddiing them were the realm of tech geeks only.
The smartphone world has now exploded and become mainstream. The demographic of people that visit this site is now very different. Lots of n00bs asking for one-click root solutions and video tutorials, instead of just reading and doing. A lot more n00bs asking the same questions over and over, without bothering to do any research. And asking for help without providing any background information. I remember the days when nobody would even help you, if you didn't have your carrier, phone version, firmware version, and radio listed in your signature.
So my specific peeve is a bit different (less about the whining, and more about users not wanting to learn and research). But the basic premise is the same: the user base here has changed a whole lot over time.

Hmm I'm not sure I follow Ya about people whining , we get sometimes a bunch of people who don't follow instructions or read any previous posts but it seems its just the normal new user issues until they get broke in. The hoxl community in my opinion is the best group around in xda. With s off and our awesome choices in many android based versions it seems any update from carriers would be a severe downgrade and at this point serves us no purpose. I guess to make long story short I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is ( no offense meant)
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

DESERT.TECH said:
Hmm I'm not sure I follow Ya about people whining
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The OP may (or may not) have had this particular thread in mind: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2167162
That's just one guy. But there is always a surprising number of people on here, waiting around for official OTAs, afraid to root/BL unlock their phones, etc.

Lol Ya that was a good example
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

Think this board's bad? should have seen the hp touchpad section right before it died. There's a new thread/post asking for someone to port win7 and win8 almost every day, and it's never going to happen lol.

Back in the day people who bought smartphones were geeks and tech heads, plus this site was mainly HTC devices WinMo devices. Now almost everyone has a smartphone so you get a lot of annoying people on here.

Ha! As bad as this place can get with noobishness, the iOS jailbreak community is worse because the barriers to entry are a lot lower. Pretty much everything is one-click once the exploits are found, and there's no division by handset like there is with Android. Bricking is next to impossible because you can easily recover and go back to stock through iTunes.
I haven't been at xda all that long, but I was into jailbreaking from when the 3G was released, which was mid-2008. Back then, it was only hardcore geeks and most people didn't even realize jailbreaking existed or had only the vaguest understanding of what it was. When I came over the divide last year, it had gotten so bad people thought you could jailbreak over wifi because iTunes does most things over wifi now. You would go through ten posts trying to help someone only to discover they didn't even have their iPhone plugged into their freaking computer. Plus you would have people showing up for the express purpose of arguing that you shouldn't jailbreak and that all of us were going to jail.

Everyone and their mom has a smartphone now. That statement applies to me as my mom has a Galaxy Note 2. The only thing I ever seen her do with it is look up celebrities net worth on google now :laugh:. I have never understood why would there be anyone here waiting for AT&T to release their JB Sense ROM when we have had it here for over 2 months. I'm here because I want to get the absolute best out of my phone that the purely stock experience cannot match.

NJGSII said:
Everyone and their mom has a smartphone now. That statement applies to me as my mom has a Galaxy Note 2. The only thing I ever seen her do with it is look up celebrities net worth on google now :laugh:. I have never understood why would there be anyone here waiting for AT&T to release their JB Sense ROM when we have had it here for over 2 months. I'm here because I want to get the absolute best out of my phone that the purely stock experience cannot match.
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Everyone and their mom has a smartphone, but not everyone and their mom comes here and talks about flashing ROMs. I expect stupidity in the forums as a whole from outsiders who just come here from a Google search, but people in the ROM threads are just as lazy and entitled. ROM threads are nearly impossible to keep up with because they're 1000 pages long and 980 of those pages are repeat questions. I'm new here so maybe that's the way it's always been but it's frustrating to say the least. If I don't come here for one day, I have 30 pages to catch up with on the single ROM I actually follow.

When I first bought my phone a good six months ago, coming from 3gs, All I did was troll up until now. The first thing I found was the thread to unlock, supercid and , root my phone, for att 2.20. I found two threads that would do it, the all-one-tool kit, and the x-factor exploit. I decided to go with the x-factor instead of the all in one because i wouldn't learn anything with the tool-kit. After that I ran into the problem of no rom, recovery, and an un-mountable sdcard. I did a quick search about the un-mountable sdcard in our forums here and found the Team Nocturnal SD Fix for evita. Once that was done i had a working sd card, trwp recovery but still no rom. So i did another search and found one of the best informational posts ever, Gunnyman's quick and dirty adb/fastboot primer this got me on track to start pushing rom zips to my sdcard without having a bootable rom and also told me that i had to fastboot flash boot boot.img every time I installed a new rom hboot 1.14+. And I still haven't had to ask any question on how to do something because guaranteed 100% that someone else has asked that very same question you just have to read and read some more, the only way someone hasn't asked your question is if you've been doing your own mod work that nobody else has seen.

I'm nowhere near as active as I used to be. Cooking your own winmo roms was fun in those days. But that was in College and at att when I actually had time to learn that stuff. Generally if you follow instructions to a T, you will be fine.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

I hate people who jailbreak at my school. Why? Because I'm the kid they b**** to about EVERYTHING. How do you jailbreak? Where did you download it? How do I install stuff? How do I get everything free? OH EM GEE MY PHONE KEEPS RESTARTING WHAT DO I DO?! JAILBREAKING SUCKS ITS ALL YOUR FAULT! To this I reply with "Google it you d*** a**" This being my first smartphone, I have used every peice of it. I have a girl who bought a gs3 and has yet to figure out how to put apps in folders. I can say, without a doubt in my mind. That I am the only kid in my grade with common sense for technology. I'm only in 8th grade so I pray it gets better in highschool.
-Sugardaddy Duncan

When did xda become so safe?
When did the scene become a joke?
The kids who used to live for custom and root
Now want their OTA and officials
Cursing and flipping n00bs are not allowed,
In fact let's keep dev only talk levels down
Must separate the church and skate!
When did xda become so safe?
I know it wasn't Turge or h8rift,
Who put up the barricades
Like a stake in the heart,
Somehow we got driven apart

Arrow44 said:
I hate people who jailbreak at my school. Why? Because I'm the kid they b**** to about EVERYTHING. How do you jailbreak? Where did you download it? How do I install stuff? How do I get everything free? OH EM GEE MY PHONE KEEPS RESTARTING WHAT DO I DO?! JAILBREAKING SUCKS ITS ALL YOUR FAULT! To this I reply with "Google it you d*** a**" This being my first smartphone, I have used every peice of it. I have a girl who bought a gs3 and has yet to figure out how to put apps in folders. I can say, without a doubt in my mind. That I am the only kid in my grade with common sense for technology. I'm only in 8th grade so I pray it gets better in highschool.
-Sugardaddy Duncan
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That's really interesting. I always assumed kids growing up these days (God I sound old) would be friggin' wizards of technology having grown up with it since birth. But maybe the opposite is true : where my first computer required a lot of WORK to do anything with (custom boot disks to run DOOM and whatnot), nowadays everything just "works" so kids will be proficient on the basics but absolutely clueless on anything beyond that because they never HAD to do it...?

thebobmannh said:
That's really interesting. I always assumed kids growing up these days (God I sound old) would be friggin' wizards of technology having grown up with it since birth. But maybe the opposite is true : where my first computer required a lot of WORK to do anything with (custom boot disks to run DOOM and whatnot), nowadays everything just "works" so kids will be proficient on the basics but absolutely clueless on anything beyond that because they never HAD to do it...?
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Literally 98% of my school has iPhone's and they're all dumb ass Isheep..it's embarassing to listen to some of their conversations sometimes.. it ashames me that I go to the sane school as them

thebobmannh said:
That's really interesting. I always assumed kids growing up these days (God I sound old) would be friggin' wizards of technology having grown up with it since birth. But maybe the opposite is true : where my first computer required a lot of WORK to do anything with (custom boot disks to run DOOM and whatnot), nowadays everything just "works" so kids will be proficient on the basics but absolutely clueless on anything beyond that because they never HAD to do it...?
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As the father of three school-age boys, I can tell you that in some ways, not a whole lot has changed. The baseline has moved, but the divisions are the same. Everyone has a phone and a computer, but there are still big differences in how much they care about them.
The average kids (the same crowd who wouldn't touch a computer when I was their age) are uninterested in the guts and only know the basics of how to use them. And there is still the geek crowd who wants to know everything and play around with it.

thebobmannh said:
That's really interesting. I always assumed kids growing up these days (God I sound old) would be friggin' wizards of technology having grown up with it since birth. But maybe the opposite is true : where my first computer required a lot of WORK to do anything with (custom boot disks to run DOOM and whatnot), nowadays everything just "works" so kids will be proficient on the basics but absolutely clueless on anything beyond that because they never HAD to do it...?
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Click to collapse
This is true. I graduated highschool in 2007 to give you some perspective. The student body of my school was a little under 1000 for each grade. Of this, there were 15 of us "computer guys". Nobody else knew anything, nobody else cared.
I feel like I'm getting old, watching everyone around me. I'm a senior in college now, getting a bachelor's degree in telecommunications & systems administration. You'd be suprised to hear that most of my classmates know relatively little about computers, especially at a lower level. Hell, one of my friends who just scored a great job at target corperate IT didn't know what a CSV file was until I scolded him yesterday. Kids these days are stupid.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

ECEXCURSION said:
This is true. I graduated highschool in 2007 to give you some perspective. The student body of my school was a little under 1000 for each grade. Of this, there were 15 of us "computer guys". Nobody else knew anything, nobody else cared.
I feel like I'm getting old, watching everyone around me. I'm a senior in college now, getting a bachelor's degree in telecommunications & systems administration. You'd be suprised to hear that most of my classmates know relatively little about computers, especially at a lower level. Hell, one of my friends who just scored a great job at target corperate IT didn't know what a CSV file was until I scolded him yesterday. Kids these days are stupid.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
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I guess I get not knowing the innards /lower level stuff, but you'd think general USAGE would at least be second nature by now.

It's like with cars. Almost everyone knows how to drive and uses a car daily, but only a small percentage can fix them or understand how they work.
Most people, young and old, don't know/don't care about how computers and phones work.

[Tributarius] How XDA has inspired you ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°

Over the past year, I've seen many people making mention of how XDA has helped them make advancements in their careers/lives.
This thread is dedicated to all people and their stories. Please invite others, to tell their story.
Please ponder, then offer some insight to the following:
Who was your biggest influence, in the way of Android?
What are you doing now, since XDA-Developers and Android have opened your eyes to new opportunities?
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"
Where do you feel Android can take you?
For the "die hard" in the crowd Can you recall a time without XDA? (must put thinking cap on)

TonyStark said:
Over the past year, I've seen many people making mention of how XDA has helped them make advancements in their careers.
This thread is dedicated to those people and their stories.
What progression have you made since you joined XDA.
Please anser with the following:
Who was your biggest influence
What have you done, since your influence has been clarified
When did you decide, "it's time to make a career of this"s
Where do you feel this can take you
Why this one is up to you because I say, why ask why
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Click to collapse
Honestly, Mr. Stark, you were my biggest influence. When I first joined XDA I was a raging nOOb. I created posts that were way out of place and not thought out. You were my first contact with a moderator. You gave me guidance and pointed me in the proper direction. Thank you.
Since going in that direction, I developed a love for this community and the talented people within. I had such admiration for the developers, the recognized contributors, the themers, the modders and all of the administration. I have grown as a user and now I am working to give back to the community that has given me so much knowledge. I am working towards becoming a recognized contributor as we speak.
I realized it was time to make a career out of this when 1) an excellent opportunity arose. And 2) when I realized how much joy and satisfaction I get out of helping people. Also, how much passion and enthusiasm I have for technology.
I feel that I have an excellent opportunity now, to possibly be a manager or maybe someday an owner of a repair facility, dedicated to mobile technologies.
Again, I have so much passion for everything about technology, especially Android. I am still working to learn how to develop applications, and now I have the opportunity to learn how to fix the hardware as well. XDA, in my opinion, is the sole reason why my passion sprouted, grew, and blossomed. This community is so unique and diverse. There have been many other people here that have inspired me, @Magnum_Enforcer @Captain_Throwback @BD619 @rootSU @simms22 are just a few of the many, many wonderful and talented people within this community. Many thanks to them and the rest of you.

[No message]

@jcase thank you so much for sharing that story! Without the work you've done, nothing I've ever done, in my time here, would have been possible. So many thanks to you!

Who is IAmTheOneTheyCallNeo?
Where to begin? ... I'm going to take all your questions and combine them into a really, long, TL/DR worthy post mmmk? thnx.
I certainly haven't advanced into a career from my experience and participation with XDA. However, I have definitely made a hobby and place for myself here and it all started back in the day (which was a Wednesday by the way).
I had finally upgraded my and the wife's devices to a "smart" phone. We were no longer part of the dumb phone crowd anymore so it was time to grow up.
She had a Droid Eris, and I the amazing Droid Incredible. Although the phone was cool and visually appealing, I felt it was lacking something.. It wasn't as fast as I wanted. In my mind, you should be able to press a button and BAM, you're there. So I began looking on-line for ways to make the device faster.
I started out by visiting the different threads for my device and gained an understanding for what rooting a phone means and how one goes about doing it and what SuperUser is for, etc.
After a few scared posts to test the public forum waters, I through bit lip achieed my first root. I thenk joined the rom flashing community jumping from rom to rom trying to find the best one for myself. This carried on for a bit.
At some point, I decided that I wanted to take the stock rom, and cater it to my specific needs and desires instead of flashing other people's roms. I started using titanium backup to freeze or remove apps because I wanted my rooted stock rom to be debloated. Through a grueling process of trial and error on every file, I found what breaks when what is removed and documented it on paper.
Once I was comfortable and familiar with what each apk file did (or didn't do if removed) I moved on to modifying them directly through the rom zip file on my computer with 7zip. This opened up a new world of hurt because now I was exposed to libs, drivers, audio files, xmls, docs, etc. So that took a long time opening things up and trying to understand what they did. At one point it was a brain overload and I almost gave up interest because it was just too much.
One day, I learned how to change lock screen unlock rings and how changing the pngs can change the image and I began learning what images were called on when what gets pressed or moved on the screen. I was fairly decent with photoshop and offered my services in a thread talking about lock rings. Another XDA member requested I modify a TRON disc to be his lock ring which was coincidental as that was the exact thing I wanted to do to mine! I soon became friends with XDA member (My first buddy on XDA) @synisterwolf and we teamed up in our own HTC Incredible thread (or Rezound.. I actually forget which device we started all this on) making built to order lockscreen rings for people. That was a big hit and we started moving into some other theme type elements like changing the blue navigation chevron in maps to spaceships or tron cycles, etc.
Taking a step into the theme world however meant that I would need to learn how to decompile and recompile apks so I began my learning process in that. To my dismay, a decompiled apk (down to smalli) is incredibly full of stuff I had not even imagined and to this day I still have issues understanding most of it. I did however manage to change smalli in my code, line for line, from a different device to my Rezound which succeeded in giving me the first 5-point AOSP lock system which at the time, wasn't available to the device.
Learning later to make changes in the res and res/values folder taught me how to theme system level elements to the apks and what they did in rom.
I also did a lot of internet searching on how to make roms faster and came up with all kinds of build.prop edits or files you can add into the rom and I experimented a lot.
At one point, I took notice of a talented individual name @chad0989, who together with another talented member @tiny4579 worked on advancements to roms and a kernel which included a voltage modifying app titled Incredikernel. This app (if kernel permitted) allowed you to undervolt each frequency voltage value in an effort to improve rom performance, or save on battery. Now, Chad had his own custom flashable voltage presets that ranged from certain levels to most extreme but I felt the extreme could go a little further. So what I did was Lock my phone at each possible frequency (both min and max) and under as much heavy load as I could put it under, modified down the voltage value just 1 step above what would cause the phone to lock. I spent hours forcing my phone to ride just 1 frequency at a time and placing it under major load just so I can get the lowest possible minimum values. When I was done, it was completely stable and far below what I had imagined. I shared the modified values with Chad and everyone else interested.
I finally came to a point in my android fun where I wanted to share with the public a stock sense rom that I'd personally modified for myself to what I felt was best suited for performance and battery with as little bloat as possible.
I soon came to find out however that I would have to come up with my own files without using files from other individuals so I couldn't just go out and ask somebody for their stock base to use...
Thus, I was lead by someone to the DSIXDA Kitchen by XDA Developer @dsixda. I found out through some friends that you could take the Official RUU for your device and run it through this "kitchen". The kitchen would then decrypt it, deodex it, generate a manifest, and an updater script for you! It was amazing. For such a noob like myself, this was gold.
The learning curve with the kitchen if you've never used it takes time. It forced me to have to fully understand adb which also required me to learn about having the have the latest android tools and sdk. I also inevitably found out that I needed the appropriate java on my pc to make everything work (this includes decompiling and recompiling stuff too). Trying to get the kitchen set up and learning how to use it was frustrating for me at first, but I eventually got there.
After I had what I felt was officially mine to distribute, I used all those small skills I'd acquired to date and with the help of questions being answered by others who'd released roms, I released my first Sense rom (for the HTC Rezound) and called it NeoMAX.
At this time however, I wasn't too confident about myself and was afraid I'd remove stuff people need so I left a lot of things in to keep people happy. The rom however was a big hit for the device.
Over time I gained some guts about me and "took it to the next level" and modified NeoMAX in a way that I personally felt a rom should be for best performance and battery life and released ADRENALINE which was completely debloated and became the smallest sense rom available (which was apparently a big deal for a device with little memory). People loved it.
I then had a moment where I went crazy with it all and released two more roms similar to ADRENALINE only this time they were "De-Sensed" roms in which I tried to make them as close to AOSP as possible. "Simplistic" was the sense-free version of NeoMAX and Injection was the sense-free version of ADRENALINE.
So now I had 4 roms and felt everyone was waiting for the next big thing.
Chad at one point however, broke the ice and got a working AOSP rom for the HTC Rezound which I'd never run on any device before. I'm not sure if any of you have ever had the Rezound before but even running my fastest rom at the time, it was nothing in comparison to AOSP.
I ran AOSP for the first time and was blown away at home fast it was in comparison to Sense and I soon became a strict AOSP follower after that.
I wanted to release my own AOSP rom but learned that I would have to learn how to compile code from source in order to have my own and at the time, I knew absolutely nothing about linux. I was a born Windows user and had never touched linux.
So I had a crash course with my buddy PonsAsinorem and he mentored me for some time in hopes that I would take over and maintain his CyanogenMod project but it was too much for me to handle at the time. I literally had headaches trying to understand any of what he was trying to teach me. Kinda like when you get a new job and the first day, you're blown away by all the stuff you need to learn.
Some time later another friend of mine @mbobino helped me to figure out how to set up a build environment with java and toolchains and walked me through to my first rom compile of CyanogenMod.
Not wanting to release a stock AOSP rom though, I soon learned that, like smalli in Sense, you could modify the source code to add or change things in the rom. Not being a code pioneer, I learned of a huge pool of "cherry-picks" by others more knowledgeable than I that you could look through and drop into your work. All I had to do was walk the custom code isles and cherry pick all the cool features I wanted!
So I had a huge page of cherry-picks and learned how to pull them. Unfortunately, I soon found out that you couldn't just simply pull everything in and expect them all to play nicely... Especially if one pick modifies the same files of another and that second pick assumes the file being changed was unmodified.. This forced me to have to understand how the changes work and I had to learn what needed to be "fixed" in order for all my changes to work together.
I did a lot of growing up with aosp fixing merge/cherry pick errors and trying to fix compiler errors as well. It was no quick process and took me nearly a year to gain a full understanding of how to do it with minimal effort.
I stayed in the AOSP game for the duration of my influence on the Rezound device. I released roms based off of CM, PAC, and AOKP and made many more friends like @apophis9283, @brenuga, @bunchies, @dmeadows013, @Flyhalf205, @Hanger84, @kkozma, @localceleb, @Miss Dragon, @red3razor, @REV3NT3CH, @shrike1978, @Sirknifealot, @Snuzzo, @TheBr0ken, @usagi-pire, @wildstang83, and @XRaptor29. I was even the first at one point to get either PAC or AOKP working on one of the new android platforms for the device.
At some point I was nominated for Recognized Contributor, which made me more proud to be a member of XDA. I can't remember who it was who nominated me at the time, but thank you again.
I soon found out that you could modify build flags for rom opimization on system level and read through a fat GNU page listing all the possible build flags you could use. I did my best to learn (or understand for that matter) what flags I'd want to use and how to add them in and what they broke if used (like using a compiler flag for thumb flags at -O3 broke Camera Viewfinder on screen for the Rezound).
After learning compiler flags I began learning toolchains and got into the whole Linaro and SaberMod chains game. At one point, not knowing any better, I forked SaberMod toolchains over to my github and renamed them Linaro
I was approached later that night through hangouts by the creator of the chains @sparksco which was something like "Hey.. You forked my toolchain and called it Linaro.. It's not Linaro dude" lol. I got to know this developer over time and he helped me a lot with understanding how toolchains worked and the compiler flags I was new at. People who knew of him referred to him as the "toolchain god" so it was good for me to learn from him (even if he didn't want to be a teacher at the time ).
At some point I got frustrated with having to modify a ton of things every time you wanted to change a chain though. I found that a certain tolchain may work best for kernel but another worked best for rom so I wanted to use two separate chains. Following a similar example by another dev, I created what's known as the GCC FREEDOM initiative (which I'm proud to say many rom teams use and still use today). As a matter of fact, sparksco has continued to improve on the initiative and continues to improve and update it.
I soon noticed that people began writing articles about my work on other Android Forums and I seized that opportunity to apply for Recognized Developer and got it.
I then spent my time mentoring other potentials (many of whom are now XDA Developers or Recognized Contributors) teaching them how to build and diagnose problems, theme stuff, etc. This kept me sharp and I also learned a few things from each of them as well as they learned things along the way that I had missed. I gained rapport with many of them and the android community and we all helped each other out when there were issues. This, in my opinion, is what android should be about.
To this day I'm still learning from others who have been in longer and are more knowledgeable than I. Github was no walk in the park to learn and I still struggle with it from time to time. In fact, there was a time Chad had mentioned that Github was harder to learn than android.. I still agree with that statement.
For a few months, my friends wildstang and tonystark kept nudging me to apply for Forum Moderator. They told me I had what it takes to be a mod for XDA, so finally I applied (not really expecting anything and half interested). However, once I received word several months later that I'd made "The Final Cut", I yearned for the position lol. I soon after became mod, and have built up friendships with many of them over time. It truly is like a family and we work together to ensure that XDA remains a peaceful place where Android Enthusiasts can come and enjoy sharing their works, ideas, and conversations with Android.
One day I finally purchased my HTC One Max (at the constant heckling of my close friend Flyhalf205 with promises of ruling the galaxy and stuff), I fell back in love with HTC Sense. He told me he would win me back over to Sense and although I told him it wasn't possible, it happened. I realized that my love for AOSP was strictly due to the fact that it made the device fast and now it no longer mattered.
I finished out the Rezound with my signature rom "TACHYON" which I could boast was the fastest rom for the device to date, and left (might still be).
Once on the Max, I realized a freedom I hadn't felt since the HTC Incredible days.. I was just a device owner. Very few people knew who I was on the Max. I was no longer stressed about pushing roms to the public or fixing aosp builds or helping others with their problems. It was then that I found out that I was completely burnt out and almost left android development for good.
One day, for myself only, I took it back to the beginning and went with Adrenaline again only this time, I applied all my accumulated knowledge to that point to make it something much more special. I learned through a friend @[email protected] how to theme the SystemUI and create my own themes in the built in theme chooser which I surprisingly liked more than doing roms I liked it so much that I did 33 themes which may seem excessive to many, however I like options. After Flyhalf hounded me for months to release the rom, I finally did.
I stayed on the Max for maybe 6 months and my friend @dottat was generous enough to gift me with a htc m8.
I have been on the M8 now for maybe half a year and it's been fabulous. I had intentions of releasing so many roms and cool things but in the end, I only released a single ADRENALINE rom, which I'm ok with.
I actually had every intention to stay on the M8 through the middle of 2016 as my contract wouldn't be eligible for an upgrade until that time. However, through the generous efforts of my very own HTC USA Moderator team, I came to own a HTC One m9 as of today Thank you guys for that :good::highfive:
Long story short, there is not just 1 person who has made an influence on me here. It is through the efforts of several people, whether intentional or not, that I am where I am today..
I came here as a troll, looking for fun, and found a home.
Love you guys,
-Neo

ΠΣΘ said:
Some time later another friend of mine @mbobino helped me to figure out how to set up a build environment with java and toolchains and walked me through to my first rom compile of CyanogenMod.
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You mean I get my own line in your autobiography?!?!? Wow... makes me miss this place. Maybe I should come back and start down this rabbit hole again.

What a tough thread. How can you put so much influence into a single post? Maybe I should just take the next 3 posts and put Reserved in them for later use.
It is really hard to say who is/was my biggest influence on the site, as I have interacted with so many people over the past 4.5 years. I would have to say that I have a freakish memory and if I have ever talked or interacted with you and you have not changed your UserName, I will remember who you are and most of the time what we talked about. This is what makes it so hard to pinpoint anyone person or even people. I'm not a Developer, Themer or even a hacker that some of the above and I am sure below posters are. I can hold my own in all of those realms, but anyone of you can code circles around me. What I do consider myself is that I am a person who is cut from the same cloth as most of the Users on this site. With that being said, I do have a soft spot for the Users on this site. We have all been in Panic Mode when we got into a bootloop and didn't know how to get out. Or flashed some Mod and forgot to Nand beforehand. There is no denying it, that sucks.
When I first came to XDA, I was looking for a simple function called Root. Back then, when you searched for Root, most of the things that came up in le Goog's page were relevant to Jailbreaks and iOS. Android was a baby and I was tasting the sweet flavor of Éclair at the time. This was before Froyo and the Apps2SD, so we had 128mb of /system and 128mb of /data which filled up really, really fast. I needed to be able to install some more apps at the time (that were mostly junk apps, but I didn't know any better then) and the phone just couldn't hold it. I still remember the beads of sweat as the pooled up on my neck when I ran my first -sh command. It almost worked, but failed and I had to restore back to a stock.sbf (it was a Motorola XT720). You live and you learn, I guess. Looking around, trying to figure out how to do all this I came across the OT section (specifically the Off-Topic: Image Thread). This was where I first came in contact with a few Mods and some really cool Users. To this day, I still interact with many of them and look to some of them as true friends.
That phone borked and I got a SGS1/Vibrant and started to learn the Samsung eco-system. I met a group of Devs and testers in there and started contributing where I could. This went on for about a year, which is like an eon in internet time. There was a kerfuffle where AOKP had left the site and moved to Rootz and many of those guys who came to be my friends, left XDA. I stayed and blended my posts between both sites. Some of them came back and some didn't, but I am still in contact with many of them daily, even so much as a few minutes ago. We have seen births, deaths, marriages starting and ending, good times and bad, but we always know where we met and keep that as a foundation of our friendships.
I've met several people from the site IRL, talked to some on the phone, sent devices/products to their home addresses and have even had to Infract one. This bodes to what I do on this site and I take it very seriously. Many Users and FSMs alike know that I am brutally honest and I always will be. When I am wrong, I admit it. When I am right, I don't pound it in your face. This isn't something that I generally state in public on-site, so if you have every interacted with me, then you'd know that I speak the truth. It isn't because I have some power trip, it's because that was the way I was raised and the way I raise my own kids.
Honesty and Integrity first. As long as you have those, your word is your oath.
With that being said, I don't work in Android or tech, but I have applied many of the attributes that I have gained on-site into my everyday dealings with personnel and management. I employ the same honesty on-site that I do off-site and if anything, that is what XDA's biggest influence is for me. I only hope that the way that I interact with Devs and Users on-site will transfer to the ways that they help/post/work/...with others.
Who was your biggest influence
Every person that I interact with or even simply read their posts.
What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities
Living the dream
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"
Join Date: 17th November 2010
Where do you feel this can take you
To the moon, Alice. To the moon.

Perhaps I have no business posting here, as I'm no developer, but I feel my career has certainly been improved/inspired by XDA.
I was first promoted at work and had a basic cell phone on my company's business account. I then asked my boss if I could purchase my own smartphone, if I could activate it on our business account, which he approved.
I went with a Blackberry 7130E that I purchased used. I moved to Curve, then the Storm and Storm 2 phones and liked the touchscreens vs. the "hard" keyboards. I was soured on iPhones due to my dislike for Apple. (I have worked in IT for the better part of 18 years, and most of that was Microsoft and Linux stuff, so I had to be anti-Apple, lol) so naturally the choice was either Windows Mobile (at the time) or Android... Android had more choices and was sort of just up-and-coming at the time, so I decided on a Motorola Droid X... Slowly but surely, more people at my company started getting Smartphones, and I became the resident "expert" on tech support for them. As a result, I was given account management access for our VZW Business account. I transitioned roles within my company (less direct IT work, more "business operations" work), and I was made a SPOC for our VZW account.
I was never much of a programmer, and my Linux knowledge has waned, so I wasn't going to be much help as a Dev. I was able to offer support and help to the Devs though... file hosting, offering to lend my devices (since it didn't matter if my phone was bricked--I'd just get a new one!), or just being a glorified cheerleader.
TonyStark said:
Who was your biggest influence
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Starting out, I worked a lot with @dhemke17 as he did Dev work on the Incredible 2 (I believe)... He tried to incorporate some of my suggestions on his ROM and I also gave him File Hosting for mirroring of his files. Almost all of the people I've communicated with on XDA have been overwhelmingly awesome, both in public threads and PMs. @jcase and his team have impressed/inspired me with their ability to get things done on HTC devices, @ΠΣΘ reached out to me not so long ago and we've hit it off pretty well (if I say so myself)--yet another "grassroots" guy that just loves interacting with fellow smartphone enthusiasts. I know I'm probably missing a lot of others, but honestly it's tough to differentiate with all of the acquaintances I've made over the years.
What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm managing my company's Cell phone plan(s). I help out co-workers if they are having issues with their phones (yes, even iPhones). I feel like I've been given a lot more responsibility and been able to influence my boss and co-workers, fueled by my thirst for knowledge of all things smartphones.
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, in regard to my becoming a SPOC, it was a natural progression. I was helping out so many people with their phone issues, my superiors recognized it was a natural fit. The silver lining was that I was getting burnt out in my previous role and welcomed the change--I am now relatively stress-free and loving my job.
Where do you feel this can take you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In talking to @ΠΣΘ and others, I may find it interesting to learn more about being a Dev. I know I love flashing custom ROMs and gain knowledge from this community each and every day. If I do decide to make a go of it, if nothing else I have something that I could do if my current career path leads me astray.

WorldOfJohnboy said:
Perhaps I have no business posting here, as I'm no developer, but I feel my career has certainly been improved/inspired by XDA.
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Click to collapse
On the contrary, this is what we all want to see mate:good:
You and everyone that shares their story, are the core of what makes XDA great
We all are, what makes XDA Family:good:

Thank you all for sharing these stories. The amount of inspiration I feel, is overwhelming. It's comforting to know that these "strange" desires I have, in regards to all things Android, are echoed so loudly amongst this community. I truly feel like I'm at home here.

Wow, reading these impressive story`s here definately proves that passion and perseverense does make a difference and can change someones life.
I`am by all means not a developer or even working as a phone/pc/it professsional but just a enthousiast who likes to tinker with phones. Started as a `noob` and as i steadily gained knowledge by reading and trying i assisted other users to solve their problems regarding rooting, flashing, mods etc etc. I enjoy it very much andhelping with other users issues also makes me better too imo.
Who was your biggest influence
My biggest influence are all the motivated and willing users that like to help others without beeing/becoming sarcastic or condescending. One person specificaly i`d like to mention is @malybru for his help and beeing an inspiration, but there are so many good people here and i can`t mention them all but i owe you all of you my gratitude.
What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities
Still the same proffesion which i love.
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"
Joined XDA in 2010
Where do you feel this can take you
To the poorhouse as i frequently sell my phone and buy a newer device

This is a wonderful forum and has potential for anyone. It might not always connect to a career, but the fact we are here reading shows our interest. I love that almost any issue is solvable if you search the boards. I have been helped so much here and hope I have helped others. My wife just got a LG G2 and I had no clue how that worked, a quick hop over to the forum and all was answered (only a few questions I had). A nice guy over there even shared his rom with me, which was great. I have done a little building, but I am still a novice. I do know all I need to get better is readily available here. Having a baby, studying a post grad cert, and working have kind of got in the way.

Who was your biggest influence?
The people who said, "Read more. Use the search function." or said, "."
What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities?
Use mobile tech in my daily life. Use it to solve problems, be more efficient and it's a great hobby.
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"?
Just after I learned how to flash my Blackjack SCH-M450. God, I just found my first post as koe1974 from 2007!
Where do you feel this can take you?
To infinity and beyond!

Oh this is gonna take me a while, been on here since 2008 but joined 2009. So many influences and friends made....
I'll be back lol

Been here since 2011.
Learned how to root my n7000 banger, install Linux, compile and not ask idiotic questions (Google is your friend).
Learned it's best to stick to G+ and stay away from XDA because reasons.

In comparison to others, my story is boring as hell, but prepare for TL/DR.
I got my first phone in 1999? where the cell phones in Poland actually started to appear. I was using random feature phones until 2011, when my best friend @Anomalious got the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. He was so amazed by Android, that I decided to pick the only smartphone I could afford - the Xperia X8. I made a call to my carrier, placed an order and got my shiny little beauty couple of days later.
I never actually thought that I will become a moderator. For over 20 years I lived in a small village (200 people) in one of the poorest regions in Poland. Needless to say that we earn only $3/h, which is a silly amount for a country in the heart of Europe and a member of European Union. Oh well, we have to live with that. When I joined the XDA, I could barely speak English (well, I still do). I was looking for a custom ROM that is faster than SE stock firmware. I joined the community, became the part of it and realized that Android is my hobby and I would love to know it more.
I started with translations, as I hated that my favorite custom ROM was partially translated to Polish. I downloaded the source and wanted to see how this thing work. I started my first build and failed miserably after 10 seconds. At this point XDA wasn't full of guides of almost everything, so I had to look for answers on my own. After a week or two I managed to compile a part of the ROM with my own translations. That was fun, so I joined the dev team, where I could talk with amazing people.
Who was your biggest influence
@doixanh. This chap is not only one of the Asian magicians that do wonders with code, but also a great pal to hang out with. His wisdom, enthusiasm and sense of humor are absolutely amazing!
What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities
I write about tech. Over 10 years ago I made a mistake of my life and didn't chose the computer science as my studies subject. I went for journalism instead and I partially regret it. It's fun, but creating own apps and games would be much more fun. Maybe I will learn to code properly in the future. I need a motivation though :silly:
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"
Almost instantly when I got my X8. It was almost unusable with the 2.1 firmware prepared by Sony Ericsson. Luckily Sony is so much different and makes better ROMs.
Where do you feel this can take you
Hopefully XDA will help me to find some good and interesting job. Right now I feel that reality hits me hard (bro) and I can't fulfill my ambitions. Nobody wants to give me a chance, which is sad and I have to live with it.

ΠΣΘ said:
One day, I learned how to change lock screen unlock rings and how changing the pngs can change the image and I began learning what images were called on when what gets pressed or moved on the screen. I was fairly decent with photoshop and offered my services in a thread talking about lock rings. Another XDA member requested I modify a TRON disc to be his lock ring which was coincidental as that was the exact thing I wanted to do to mine! I soon became friends with XDA member (My first buddy on XDA) @synisterwolf and we teamed up in our own HTC Incredible thread (or Rezound.. I actually forget which device we started all this on) making built to order lockscreen rings for people. That was a big hit and we started moving into some other theme type elements like changing the blue navigation chevron in maps to spaceships or tron cycles, etc.
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Click to collapse
the feels. <3 it was, in fact, the HTC Incredible that we started with. stuck together for the rezound. I still have the USS Enterprise Google MAPS apk somewhere.

@TonyStark pinged me to add my story..
My IT background goes something like this. I bought my first real PC in about 1998 and just sat it for hours trying to figure it out. I have never been on course or anything like that but it appears I am a pretty good problem finder / solver. If I cant find the answer google is always the way to go. I was once told I had to teach an IT class for one year (I am a maths teacher) because I was good with troubleshooting the departments PC. I got fed up of just telling the kids to google their problems because that all I would do... but that's another story.
So I upgraded to SE X10i back in about 2010 when I was playing a lot FB poker (I don't trust myself playing with real money, yet!) and I was so frustrated that I couldn't play poker on the phone. I really wondered what the point of having a smartphone that could browse the internet was if you couldn't browse the internet.
Anyway, I soon realised I needed to get Java installed on the phone and to do that I needed root. I have never heard of this before but after a LOT and a LOT of reading I was ready to try and root it. It was a really bad hack as I remember, you had to download an official FTF from Sony servers and then cancel it at exactly 98% complete so you could replace a file. I was so nervous that I would brick it....
Since then I have spent time learning about how to improve my phone. I am no serious coder at all, but I pick things up and am fairly good at helping new people to the scene and quite a good troublesooter of problems.
Who was your biggest influence.
 @DooMLoRD helped me out when I started playing around with kernels
What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities
Currently I do not even have root on my Z3. I have some apps like sky sports that wont work with it, but I am still keen on keeping up with the latest stuff
When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"
XDA just gradually took over, I am on here most days and my laptop is always on with XDA open.
Where do you feel this can take you
Hopefully I can start an extracurricular class at school, helping young kids get into Android or just into coding anyway at all. I will still have to learn a lot myself, but the joy is in the journey

I want to play along and this is how i started this additional with XDA
My first "smartphone" was the BlackBerry Storm. This was the stepping stone to my adventure. I met @sk8erwitskil IRL and he introduced me to the world of Linux. Showing me his Samsung phone and how he was able to modify it and at that moment i wanted to do the same. (cool kid syndrome) This lead me to buy the HTC Incredible and a group of friends, that although i have never met, they would end up changing everything for me.
I first started using METAMorph to do low level png and color thememing of apps and CM. I was bad at photoshop and would only know how to replace pngs from ones i found online. that was until i met @ΠΣΘ (formally known as IAmTheOneTheyCallNeo) I had an idea to change the lock screen rings to something more fun. I started to send PM's like a mad man requesting everything i could think of and he delivered no problem. ( i think he told me to stop using XDA pms and gave me his gtalk) Now i know our parents told us to not trust strangers online but it felt right, and who can really say no to free candy??
With Neo and I working together we were like a T-Rex with arm extension grabber things.. UNSTOPPABLE. We quickly found out how demanding the work was and not once did it feel like a chore or a job but a hobby that would push us to do great things. Not to long after we started to theme apps. Changing out the chevrons in Google MAPS for iconic spaceships and tiny cars. Our personal cars at that. He was the man that did all the photoshop and i was the one figuring out how to not break the APKs. Fast forward a year. We started to crave more. Working with an app was fun but it was time to learn how to do it the correct way. Que APKTOOL. The learning curve that is modifying an APK from scratch instead of inserting a picture was like night and day. It was a struggle, this was a new challenge that we were determined to figure out. (7Zip warrior FTW)
Enter @fernando sor, @Stoney 666, and the rest of the BAD SEED CUSTOM family. I remember staying up late asking questions on how to theme a rom. With every question i asked them two, three more would come to mind. I was so sure they would have blocked all communications with me from all the questions i had. But like a champ they were on point and ready to help this noob. Every time something new showed up on XDA i had to get it to work on the device i was on at the time. Animations in the notification screen, taking the honeycomb lock screen animation and making it work on ICS, changing the whole OS to a two tone theme. i really liked the blue and black. this would be a start to my first CM theme for the themer system.
Not to long after i met @Pons and @wildstang83. They were the ones making cool roms for the incredible. Pons did some incredible patch work for CM and stang was all about the Sense roms. this inspired me to start making my own roms. But i could never find the time to get it all working and eventually put a stop to it all. At this time i was dealing with incredible amount of depression. My personal life took a dump and i thought i was down for the count. The thought of modifying anything in android was the last thought on my mind.
It was a bad time. I felt nothing was going right and that i didn't even want to live. having 90% of my paycheck go to bills, and rent. Having to skip a meal or two so my dog and cat would have food. burned out and had enough. i tried to take my own life. i was ready to go and meet my creator and that was that. These strangers i never met in real life fought harder for me than i did myself, they manage to track me down some how and get me the help i needed. People that i have never met or didn't even know where i lived were able to call police and services and find me and saved me when i needed it the most. During my stay at the hospital, little did i know i had a lot of people trying to make sure i was okay. My phone died due to the fact there were so many phone calls, notifications, Gtalk, twitter, XDA pms. It was through these wonderful people that i am still here today. We would talk via Gtalk, IRC, Chat rooms, phone calls, text, every electronic means of communications you can think of. They cared so much about me it was a different feeling. Like there was some Good out there in the world and i could finally see it.
Today, I am a lot better. I found help with my depression and anxiety, I'm doing a lot better for myself and i have some incredible friends I've made here on xda. I was able to work with some of the greatest developers of the incredible, rezound, Inc 4g, and now the M7. (im an htc whore?) Although i dont do much now i am always learning from the wonderful devs here. I was able to get my laptop to build CM from source. I learned how to use Linux, how to write in java and how to edit smali. i know how to set paths in windows(like a boss), how to decompile a jar, apk, how to split a ramdisk, how to test OTG all thanks to the wonderful "strangers" I've met online. Thank you XDA for this wonderful place that has made me who i am.
The crackflasher, tweaker (not meth), the themer, the modifier, the one with a million questions that i know where i can get my answers. The one that will help anyone in need, like so many others did for me.
thank you everyone,
SynisterWolf

Thanks for sharing the lovely stories. Neo.. I remember the good old time.

App Suggestion When are you going to fix the XDA app

The absolute non structure weirdness and quite frankly appallingly terrible decision to remove actual forum sections has had an impact on everybody, not just the end user but every single person who uses XDA.
A weirdo decided to change something that needn't be changed, but went and did it anyway, they altered something that meant that you HAD to add a category otherwise your thread will literally sit in limbo without a category.
Who on earth tboght this was a good idea? It isn't, it's pitiful. The familiar development, Q+A, general, themes are GONE!
In its place is one section of threads, no order whatsoever, perhaps if they've chosen to pick a category but they don't have to, it's not mandatory??????
Whoever sanctioned this needs sectioning.
Web version rant over......
Onto the app!!!
Where can I start, I actually enjoy looking back on previous devices, why?
Because they actually are formatted and filtered correctly, you know like a FORUM!!! Like a normal forum like the billions on the internet...
For some reason that's gone, you've got a weird plethora of non negotiable threads with zero distinction besides what the title is; which again is subjective if it even has been categorised.
Beyond the absolute mentalness.
You cannot choose a category on the app.
I actually paid for the premium version of the XDA app back in the day...why?? If ever there was an advert for ripping off an awful dev, it's this, I pay for all my apps I don't do warez but this is an incentive to do the prior.
You! Soon after the elimination of the XDA premium app which wasn't like 20p it was a few quid, made an ad laden version which was worse, now it's barely usable.
What is going on?????
I'd say I'm sorry for feeling this way but it genuinely feels like a director who's face fits just got a job and he has to change something for the sake of changing it.
It's idiotic!
One senior mod actually told me that they did it to save bandwidth !!!!!
Reputations are built in years of hard work, work you've already done, yet there destroyed in seconds, with an idiotic decision, something you've just done.
No gif could describe the facepalm I wanted to convey, I can only say one word.
No..
Final thought:
XDA is an amazing place, a place I've loved for years, I've seen and met some phenomenal people, so much talent and promise, so much collaboration it makes me proud to not only be an Android enthusiast but human in general.
All you've done is give us hurdles to jump.
Get the old system back. Don't change something because it could be do it for the right reasons, if it's too be taboo then at least have a vote on it. Personally I think you'll find it's a one sided event.
The new system is abysmal and there putting it mildly.
As most parents have said to their crap kids.
"I'm not upset, I'm just disappointed"