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- Forum posts: 610
Jan 1, 2014, 9:19:16 PM via Website
Jan 1, 2014 9:19:16 PM via Website
Just a short post skimming over what's available for the Nexus 5. I'll presume anyone reading this has already unlocked their bootloader, installed a custom recovery, and rooted their phone (easily done anyway) and is familiar with the terms flashing, kernel, rom, and so on. If not ask here and I'll explain.
ROMs. As expected there are a plethora of roms for the N5. The better known developers- CyanogenMod, AOKP, ParanoidAndroid, Omni, Beanstalk etc. have official Hammerhead variations, plus there are several forks of each. There are plenty of tweaked AOSP based roms too, and some mildly modded stock bases. In fact, the only ones missing at the moment are Ubuntu touch and of course Miui roms, though they're both under development and will appear in the next few weeks or so.
Kernels. The stock kernel is fine, though if you want added extras then custom is the way to go. As above, the usual developers have been hard at work, with kernels from Franco, Faux, N3O, trinity, show-p, fugu and so on, plus the usual tuned versions of these and stock kernels. The number of possible kernel/ROM combinations are huge, and each has it's own strongpoints but being a nexus means it only takes a few minutes to change either.
Mods. A fair amount of mods, though due to the advent of Xposed modules, most are cosmetic such as changing the lockscreen appearance and status bar tweaks. There are a couple to improve the sound and the camera, but since 4.4.2 these aren't as relevant, and performance mods are pointless
. A notable development has been multiboot, which lets you boot as many roms and kernels as you want. It's a pretty handy utility: you can keep your daily driver and try another rom or two without worrying about backing up, or you can have separate roms that you could use at different times such as battery friendly for work or on the road, performance and connectivity while near a charger or at home, a gaming rom/kernel mix, even a rom with better audio capabilities.
Personally I prefer a stockish rom with Xposed modules and franco's kernel as the combination offers the best balance of performance and battery life, but like I said there are endless combinations which may give you huge speed or extraordinary battery life, whatever rings your bell basically.
So that's about it. Every day brings a new rom or two, which is no bad thing. The ease of modding the Nexus is astonishing, well to me anyway. Any androids I've had before required about half an hour in a cold sweat just to unlock the bootloader, same again to root it and normally 3 or 4 repeats of both before I was successful, and being overly familiar with adb and fastboot to change kernels or apply some mods. The downside is, nothing. It's almost impossible to brick, it's easy to get back to a completely stock, as-new phone, and besides unlocking/relocking the bootloader you can do all this directly from the phone. Cheers, have a happy new year and mod away.
ROMs. As expected there are a plethora of roms for the N5. The better known developers- CyanogenMod, AOKP, ParanoidAndroid, Omni, Beanstalk etc. have official Hammerhead variations, plus there are several forks of each. There are plenty of tweaked AOSP based roms too, and some mildly modded stock bases. In fact, the only ones missing at the moment are Ubuntu touch and of course Miui roms, though they're both under development and will appear in the next few weeks or so.
Kernels. The stock kernel is fine, though if you want added extras then custom is the way to go. As above, the usual developers have been hard at work, with kernels from Franco, Faux, N3O, trinity, show-p, fugu and so on, plus the usual tuned versions of these and stock kernels. The number of possible kernel/ROM combinations are huge, and each has it's own strongpoints but being a nexus means it only takes a few minutes to change either.
Mods. A fair amount of mods, though due to the advent of Xposed modules, most are cosmetic such as changing the lockscreen appearance and status bar tweaks. There are a couple to improve the sound and the camera, but since 4.4.2 these aren't as relevant, and performance mods are pointless
. A notable development has been multiboot, which lets you boot as many roms and kernels as you want. It's a pretty handy utility: you can keep your daily driver and try another rom or two without worrying about backing up, or you can have separate roms that you could use at different times such as battery friendly for work or on the road, performance and connectivity while near a charger or at home, a gaming rom/kernel mix, even a rom with better audio capabilities. Personally I prefer a stockish rom with Xposed modules and franco's kernel as the combination offers the best balance of performance and battery life, but like I said there are endless combinations which may give you huge speed or extraordinary battery life, whatever rings your bell basically.
So that's about it. Every day brings a new rom or two, which is no bad thing. The ease of modding the Nexus is astonishing, well to me anyway. Any androids I've had before required about half an hour in a cold sweat just to unlock the bootloader, same again to root it and normally 3 or 4 repeats of both before I was successful, and being overly familiar with adb and fastboot to change kernels or apply some mods. The downside is, nothing. It's almost impossible to brick, it's easy to get back to a completely stock, as-new phone, and besides unlocking/relocking the bootloader you can do all this directly from the phone. Cheers, have a happy new year and mod away.
— modified on Jan 1, 2014, 9:20:10 PM
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