14 DAY TRIAL // The CyanogenMod team, which is involved in the development of custom ROMs for Android devices, has just announced that they would be engaging in work with the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
For the time being, this is only a planned initiative, since the source code for the new platform release is not available, but it is a promise that the team plans on keeping.
Thus far, they have been pushing out modded software based on all major releases of Android, the latest of which was CyanogenMod 9 (CM9), built on top of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
The next flavor of their software would come as CM10, the team confirmed, while adding that the development process should be simpler and faster than it was with CM9.
“With CM9 (and ICS) being such a large jump from CM7 (GB) we decided it would be best and most efficient to essentially rewrite CM enhancements from scratch,” the team explained in a post on Google+.
“This added a bit of time to our development cycle, but the initial investment in cleaning our codebase has paid off, and CM9 is better for it. Now that JB is around the corner, we are in a place where most of our code will merge cleanly into JB, with minimal fuss.”
There will be certain criteria that will allow for the development of CM10 builds for specific devices but, if all is good, many users should be able to enjoy the goodies packed inside the latest OS release, the team explains.
However, since the source code is not out yet, they cannot determine for the time being how much work will need to be done to get the software up and running.
They also note that they might have to hand merge the updated Framework code, which would take a bit more time when compared to an automated method.
“This isn’t because of massive changes, but from what we’ve heard, the Framework code has been split into multiple projects to better the PDK (Platform Development Kit). Should be doable in a weekend’s amount of time,” they note.
Most devices that already got CM9 are likely to have a taste of CM10, but that will be determined closer to the release. No specific info when this will happen has been provided.