Why no gb roms? Plz explain!

[Silvernirvash]

Why dont people work on roms for gb considering its the current version on the bionic gb roms should be easier to make. I personally find it stupid no devs work on gb anymore

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[b00mb00mchuck]

Well... everybody is entitled to their own stupid opinion... but i don't see how this rude post will help anything... the dev comunity is always trying to move a device forward... they're the brainy guys trying to figure things out ... i don't think "easier" makes any difference to any of them when they all want to do is land a stable ICS ROM in the near future...

[landon418]

Well ics will hopefully come from Motorola. Im running miui, but the hardware acceleration not working is a big blow to gamers

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[Silvernirvash]

But thats just it it took me a while of thinking roms over in my head and i realized everyones trying to skip steps. By creating a solid fully working gb rom it would do more good in helping developers push the device forward i beleive. Its like once the bionic came out everyone pushed the development of ics roms instantly not even a thought of gb really which is weird because most phone devs start with what the phone came with not what it MIGHT have in the future. Thats why i'm so confused by all the ics roms. Droid 1 dev started on stock 1.1 1.2 eclaire right? Then like half a year later or more people started deving for gb. It took TIME to change and stuff. We just insantly went ok first step ROOT second step DEBLOAT third step.....4th step ICS

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[b00mb00mchuck]

"like once the bionic came out everyone pushed the development of ics roms instantly not even a thought of gb"

I think you missed some stuff... Eclipse... Liberty... Axiom... and a bunch of others... some with heavy ice cream themes but all GB based roms.... i felt like i waited forever for an ICS rom to break thru and be usable... and they still ain't got a solid one yet... but all the first ones to come out were ginger bread and they got alot of them working as true daily drivers... i don't see how you're saying they skipped a step when Eclipse is the number one installed bionic rom and it's ginger bread

[Dave12308]

Well ics will hopefully come from Motorola. Im running miui, but the hardware acceleration not working is a big blow to gamers

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I've had no issues with most OpenGL games. It's the 2D games that seem to have issues. Angry Birds Space comes to mind. High powered 3D games such as "Real Racing 2" work just fine.

[Dave12308]

Why dont people work on roms for gb considering its the current version on the bionic gb roms should be easier to make. I personally find it stupid no devs work on gb anymore

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My guess would be due to the locked bootloader, they've squeezed just about everything they can out of Gingerbread, and ICS development is simply more fun. The lack of being able to develop custom kernels for the Bionic is a major bummer, as the kernel is way more fun to play with.

Plus, the devs who work on these things are hobbyists. ICS is more challenging, trying to solve the data issues and everything; plus they are actively working on getting HW acceleration working. There is simply more to do.

[Dave12308]

But thats just it it took me a while of thinking roms over in my head and i realized everyones trying to skip steps. By creating a solid fully working gb rom it would do more good in helping developers push the device forward i beleive. Its like once the bionic came out everyone pushed the development of ics roms instantly not even a thought of gb really which is weird because most phone devs start with what the phone came with not what it MIGHT have in the future. Thats why i'm so confused by all the ics roms. Droid 1 dev started on stock 1.1 1.2 eclaire right? Then like half a year later or more people started deving for gb. It took TIME to change and stuff. We just insantly went ok first step ROOT second step DEBLOAT third step.....4th step ICS

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As one of the devs that worked on the Droid 1, I think I can explain. Again, it boils down to the kernel. We achieved root shortly after the Eclair 2.0.1 update, IIRC. Once we had that, there were a whole slew of things we started working on unlocking on a kernel level. Things such as built-in overclocking, CPU temperature monitoring, and Wifi tethering. Alot of the things we take for granted were not included in the Linux kernel that the stock Droid used. Kernel level development was the only way we could unlock things like these features.

In other words, we could do worlds more on the Droid 1 than we can on the Bionic. I think devs simply got bored with GB and moved on. Bionic development was pretty stagnant for awhile, so we are lucky to have several dev teams working on the Bionic at all, ICS or not.


EDIT: Or, imagine a race car anology. The Droid 1 is a truly unlimited spec race car, where you can run any drivetrain combo you want to, as well as customizing the body and paintjob. The Bionic is limited to running the exact same drivetrain as every other Bionic out there. One can only customize the body and paintjob.

In this anology, the drivetrain is the kernel, and the body/paintjob is the Android OS.

[jayman350]

excellent analogy Dave12308

as far as what the OP is asking, go check out some of the older roms mentioned above (eclipse, liberty, axiom, etc) for some custom GB roms. It doesn't make sense to keep hammering out GB roms when the device is so limited by the locked/encrypted bootloader. ICS has been under development for a while and they still don't have everything worked out, the challenge is there, and most of the devs are looking to challenge themselves instead of just rehashing the same stuff over and over with little tweaks here and there.

[buellboy9]

excellent analogy Dave12308

as far as what the OP is asking, go check out some of the older roms mentioned above (eclipse, liberty, axiom, etc) for some custom GB roms. It doesn't make sense to keep hammering out GB roms when the device is so limited by the locked/encrypted bootloader. ICS has been under development for a while and they still don't have everything worked out, the challenge is there, and most of the devs are looking to challenge themselves instead of just rehashing the same stuff over and over with little tweaks here and there.

Did they really change it so quickly?

[LATER: Just Googled it. Last March it came out, and it turned out to be a hoax. Crap. Never saw the retraction]