Two old warhorses are getting a taste of Lollipop these days – the Motorola Xoom, one of Motorola (and Verizon’s) first premium tablets, and the Samsung Galaxy S II, the smartphone that started global smartphone domination for Samsung. These devices are ancient by current standards and have no right to be running the latest and greatest Android version, but it is a testament to their robust hardware design and the commitment of aftermarket software developers that this is even possible.
The Motorola Xoom is given a taste of Lollipop through OmniROM, one of the top custom ROMs out there today. The Xoom, if you remember it, featured a 10.1-inch 720p HD display powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 2 T20 chip, and 1GB RAM – very powerful for its time. It was the first device to come out with Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet optimized interface. If you want Omni ROM 5.1.1 for your Xoom, check out the official thread at XDA.
The Samsung Galaxy S II has a very lofty history as well. It was the handset that started Samsung on a global domination path, as people took to the Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered phone very well indeed. The Galaxy S II had a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 screen and was powered by an Exynos 4210 dual core processor, supported by 1GB RAM. The last Android upgrade for this phone was Android 4.1 Jellybean, but it is still running strong as Cyanogenmod has put out nightly builds for the device using the Android 5.1.1-based CM 12.1. Check out the downloads at the official CM 12.1 download page.
Again, we will remind you that flashing a custom ROM on your device takes a bit of work, and should only be done if you’re familiar with it. Nonetheless, if you want to breathe some life into these old devices, you’re always welcome to research on how it’s done. A cursory search of the XDA forums should give you some instructions.
VIA: XDA, Cyanogenmod
About four hours ago I downloaded and installed Omnirom’s version of Lollipop 5.11 on this Motorola Xoom Mind you, this is an Alpha version. That said, it’s an extremely sophisticated and polished Alpha.
So far, it’s evident that some things don’t work. For example, Bluetooth connects with a speaker I have, but does not transmit sound to it. Dolphin Browser loads, and looks good, but will not do searches, though the Chrome Browser works well, as does my Swype+DNS. I’m just loading the tablet up now. Will fill you in later on what parts of the system are working and which parts don’t.
Even so, this is the most polished, and well behaved Alpha I’ve ever seen. Been using this particular Xoom MZ600 for four years now. This tablet was manufactured in February of 2011. Talk about robust and reliable. I’d dare anyone to show me a tablet with greater survivability. It’s not as fast as most tablets built in the last two years, but until recently this was my primary computing device till I recently bought a brand new, in the box, Xoom MZ604. The old MZ600 was relegated to use by the grandkids till now, but I hope to be able to give good input to the developmental process for the Xoom.
I’ll stay in touch.