Epsylon3 also released the first test ROM for Motorola Defy phones. The download link has been shutdown due to “copyright abuse”. The test ROM was made available at http://defy-cm7.tk//ics-test0/. I doubt it will come back online, so keep an eye on the original thread at XDA for a new download link.
Things that work in the test ROM:
Startup, bootmenu and recovery
Touchscreen and keypad (multitouch too)
Usb
New Network (netfilter) kernel modules (quota2, and fake qtaguid)
wifi
Things that need work:
Fix egl configuration : Cause the force close on many apps including default launcher, settings and gapps setup wizard
Fix colors (almost fixed)
Fix sound
Fix phone / 3G
Fix orientation sensor
Fix egl hw acceleration for omap3 (can be hard) : gralloc.omap3.so
Fix camera (will be hard)
UPDATE 11/29/2011: See this post for links to some Cyanogenmod 9 test builds for the Defy.
Sounds like we’ll start seeing the first Cyanogenmod 9 builds in the next couple months! Exciting news for everyone who has been abandoned by their handset manufacturer. I highly doubt my Motorola Defy will ever see an official upgrade, even to Gingerbread. Ice Cream Sandwich should run quite well on the Defy’s hardware.
This is exciting news for everyone in the Android community really, not just those who’ve been abandoned. The more choices you have the better, and Cyanogenmod is available for a multitude of devices.
Can’t wait until the nightly builds start popping up, it’s gonna be a fun next couple of months! If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll see an alpha or the first nightly builds of Cyanogenmod 9 within a month, or a little more. Hopefully by Christmas (and this is just me wishing) we’ll have something!
Steve also mentioned on Twitter that work will progress on Cyanogenmod 7.2 until it’s ready to be released, while simultaneously working on Cyanogenmod 9.
We're still going to get CM7.2 out the door while CM9 is being worked on.
I recently started using WePay as an alternative to PayPal. WePay has a lot going for them right now. There’s a lot of people looking for alternatives to PayPal, and WePay is a perfect alternative.
I’ve used PayPal for a very long time and have generally been very happy with it. Lately though, I’ve been having some issues related to people in other countries not being able to use PayPal anymore. Setting up recurring payments is a little more difficult than it should be too.
WePay is a great alternative to PayPal. It’s really easy to setup, setup can be done in less than a minute.
One really nice feature of WePay is how they verify your bank account (if you choose to add one). Everyone knows that PayPal makes two micro-deposits to your bank account in order to verify it’s your account. WePay does that too, but it’s a last resort. To verify your account with WePay, you can either login to your bank account via the WePay website, or you can send a picture of your photo ID and check to WePay. Both are much faster than the micro-deposit route.
WePay also lets you create multiple “accounts”. So, you could have one account for beer money, another account for rent, and so on. Pretty handy.
So, if you’re looking for an alternative to PayPal, I suggest you give WePay a shot.
Ian Hickson decided it’d be a good idea to do away with the HTML5 time element and replace it with the more generic data element. Bad idea in my opinion, but OK.
Webmonkey explains some issues with how the time element is currently outlined:
While Hickson’s move to toss time out was probably premature, there are nevertheless some problems with
I’m just glad to have the time element back. HTML5Press uses the time element in a number of places, pretty much every place a time or date is shown. I was not looking forward to going through and replacing time with data. Looks like I won’t have to now!
Yesterday we saw the debut of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Google also released the SDK for Ice Cream Sandwich, which contains some neat graphical goodies developers can start using to create Ice Cream Sandwich themes for ADW, Cyanogenmod, or whatever else really.
DameonAndMeagan at the XDA Developers forum has created a modification for Cyanogenmod 7.1 that will make the ring screen lock resemble the one found in Ice Cream Sandwich. There’s a few colors you can choose from, they’re all attached to this thread for download.
To go along with that, sonnysekhon, also at the XDA Developers forum, has created an initial Ice Cream Sandwich theme for the Cyanogenmod theme chooser. The theme has lots of bugs as you might expect, and a lot of missing graphics, but it does work. sonnysekhon has only had a day or so to put this together, so I expect he will be making improvements rather quickly. UPDATE: This Ice Cream Sandwich theme is now available on the Android Market.
sonnysekhon has also included an “extras” zip file that contains wallpapers from Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as icons. Both downloads (the extras and the CM7 theme) can be found attached to his thread.
A new font, Roboto, is the default in Ice Cream Sandwich. Android Police has details on how to set it as your font on your current (rooted) Android phone. They recommended using the Font Changer application, however I used Font Installer and was able to get it installed without any problems.
In the screenshots below I’m using the Ice Cream Sandwich CM7 theme and the Ice Cream Sandwich ring lock mod. The ADW theme is ADW Faenza and the wallpaper is from Ice Cream Sandwich.
I’ll keep this post updated as more Ice Cream Sandwich theme items are released.
UPDATE 10/23/2011:sonnysekhon released alpha 3 of his Ice Cream Sandwich Theme Chooser theme for Cyanogenmod. I sent him a message a few days ago asking what his future plans were for the theme. He says that he plans to have the Ice Cream Sandwich theme released to the Android Market within a week. So it’ll be much easier to install and update that theme once he gets it on the Market.
UPDATE 10/24/2011:AChep has released an Ice Cream Sandwich Cyanogenmod theme. He’s even got a version with a transparent status bar, which is a feature I’ve come to like a lot lately. I couldn’t get it to work on my Defy though, probably because it’s for MDPI devices only.
Also new is an Ice Cream Sandwich themed keyboard by proxuser. Not something I’ll probably use as I’m pretty loyal to SwiftKey X. Can’t see myself ever using another keyboard for Android.
