Some people have all the luck. If you like messing around with mobile operating systems, the luck may come your way in the form of a brand new smartphone from Samsung.
Cyanogen modders are gaining the attention from the “land of the morning calm”, Korea. Samsung in particular is taking notice of these programmers and sending them free smartphones. They sent the four chief developers of Cyanogen one each of the Galaxy S 2 smartphones. What is Cyanogen ? It is a customization of the android mobile operating system, but one that is outside the “normal” constraints of a smartphone that is picked up from, for example, Verizon. This modding of the android system performs what is called “jailbreaking” a smartphone ( or other android device ). This is the type of person that Samsung is courting, those who are providing the aftermarket firmware for cell phones and tablets. Cyanogen claims their version of android is better than the original.
Samsung’s free gifts are winning over one of the Cyanogen modders. One of them going by the online name of “atinm” has tweeted that this model, the Galaxy S 2, is a “cleaner” looking model smartphone. Samsung endowed “atinm” with the smartphone to use towards making a new release for Android. The new release will be called “CyanogenMod 7″ or “CM7″ for the acronym. The number seven stands for the version number of the latest stable release of the aftermarket firmware. The people at Cyanogen have permission to use parts of the copyrighted android apps. But to avoid any problems they are are also creating “open source” apps in place of the Google android apps.
This free gift giving on the part of Samsung reveals they are seeking active work from developers for their smartphones. HTC has also recently been seen allowing people to modify their boot loaders as well. Samsung is looking to enjoy the programming expertise of people like “atinm”, Steve Kondik, Kolja Dummann and those who make up the Cyanogen team. Instead of being under the watchful eye of Google, these guys are free to work out software solutions with the sense of innovation, flexibility and control that comes with true open source software.
The Samsung Galaxy S 2 was released in April of this year and will be the test bed for the next series of CyanogenMod 7 developments in the coming months. How do you get a free smartphone from Samsung ? Start creating your own firmware for the android operating system or join Cyanogen.
