Aside from giving users a more vanilla and more liberated Android experience, one of the side benefits of CyanogenMod is bringing Android to devices no manufacturer, or even Google, would dare go. In particular, the popular custom ROM has been the savior of many older devices that are relatively capable of running more recent Android versions, such as some of Sony‘s Xperia smartphones from 2011.
As the name says, LegacyXperia is a project that targets legacy devices, those that manufacturers and carriers have given up on, much to the distress of owners who still find them quite usable. Now there might be some light at the end of that tunnel, provided these owners are willing to take some steps that, ironically, might make the device unusable. Last week, Sony Xperia 2012 models were given a new lease on life via CyanogenMod. Now it’s the older devices’ turn to get reborn.
The LegacyXperia project has quite a roster of supported devices, including the Xperia Arc and Arc S, Xperia Neo and Neo V, Xperia Pro and Mini Pro, Xperia Active, Xperia Mini, and Xperia Ray. These devices, at one point in time, where supported by CyanogenMod directly but have been dropped after CyanogenMod 10. The team is now working on bringing CyanogenMod 11, and thus the latest Android 4.4, to these abandoned smartphones as well.
There is still a lot of work to be done as WiFi is marked as buggy and 720p recording and HDMI output are still not working. However, considering how much is already working at this early alpha stage, there is hope that these can get fixed in due time.
VIA: Xperia Blog
