The most famous and widely-used customized user interface for Android devices – CyanogenMod – has been declared a no-go for the brand new Samsung GALAXY S 4. This will come as a relatively large blow for Samsung if they do seek the Android hacker bid – or dollar, rather – as such a lack of support for the device from the developer community (hacker community) will result in a distinct lack of fun for those that call hacking their home. In other words, this essentially means Samsung will be selling phones to those that are happy with the way the phone works out of the box.
The announcement comes in a relatively unassuming package from Team Hacksung member XpLoDWilD who announces in an XDA Developer Forums post that unless someone goes out and does it themselves, there will be no CyanogenMod build for the Samsung GALAXY S 4 at all.
“Nobody at team hacksung (the team behind galaxy s2, note, s3, note2, gtabs… official CM ports) plans to buy it, neither develop for it. There are two variants which will be a pain to maintain, the bugs we have on the s3 will probably be there on s4 too (camera), and we all know Samsung ability to release sources while staying in line with mainline. Yes qualcomm release sources, but exynos sources we had were far from actual galaxy products. I’m pretty sure the same will happen for this one.
That’s a uniform “no” from us.” – XpLoDWilD for Team Hacksung
Team Hacksung is a sect of the larger CyanogenMod crew that creates custom software for Samsung devices. For more information on CyanogenMod, head to our fabulous CyanogenMod tag portal. As for the Samsung GALAXY S 4, you’ll want to head to the timeline below for all of our hands-on experiences, top to bottom.
The Samsung GALAXY S 4 will continue to be a contender in the smartphone universe one way or another, of that you can be sure – but for now, hacks may just fall flat.
Thanks for the tip, Jess!
The World does not revolve around CM. I doubt the average person will care because the out-of-box experience has been great for their millions of users so far.
Couldn’t agree more with you… This won’t effect the sales of the GS4 in the slightest. Maybe for the tiny, minority of people who “Insist” that “Stock” is the best. For those tiny minority, go and get a Nexus phone or one you can run CM or any other custom ROM for that matter, its not going to make a dent on the Juggernaut that is the GS4
I wasn’t going to buy it anyway so this isn’t a blow to me. However, any phone I get either has to have stock Android or Cyanogenmod. I’m glad the CM team is so on top of the phones that matter(to me).
are there any stats out there on the number of Samsung S3’s running CM…?
From a techie point of view this might be a bit of a blow but for the majority of the people buying android phones, it wont matter. Even as a techie, I’ve ran standard since ditching my HTC Thunderbolt, even though Verizon are the slowest carrier to release (or not) updates.
Whether they actually run it or not, I think just having the option drives sales more than most people realize.
It probably won’t make a dent at all in Galaxy S4 sales because the general public is often slow to follow, but if Samsung continues along that path I think you’ll start to see their popularity wane as techie’s move to other manufacturers and word of mouth slowly trickles down to the general public about all the interesting things they’re doing with their HTC/Moto/LG devices.
I agree on this as well. I’ve run CM on many of the phones I’ve had in the past, it’s a great OS. However, I’ve never run it on my S3. Unfortunately, all the tweaks that Samsung does with their phones have made it not worth giving up to use CM. Even if CM on the S3 was 100%, the tweaks such as smart stay are hard to give up. However, I did replace the crappy Touchwiz launcher the first day. 🙂 Also, the advantage of the S3 has generally been the software, not the hardware. There are phones with equally good hardware that are supported by CM. However, the one exception to this is when Samsung stops supporting the phone with new OS versions, then we may wish we had CM.
Skinned android is not the best experience. Not having the ability to take off bloatware apps is the biggest reason I decided to root and go with CM. The problem I see is that most custom roms are based off of CM, therefore making this a huge hit to the S4. This might be the boost that HTC needed. I’m sure the One won’t outsell the S4 but this will definitely help.
“Skinned android is not the best experience” That is completely subjective and based on your opinion only. I have rooted every single one of my Android devices apart from 2, can you guess which ones? The GS3 and the GN2. Why? Because they don’t need to be “Rooted”. I have both the Nexus 7 and 10 (both rooted and running AOKP), so having my daily driver running a stable, out of the box, feature rich OS is quite nice actually. As for “Bloatware” this concept is old and was only an issue when phones didn’t have much storage etc, but now phones generally come with 16GB’s as standard. As for your statement “this is a huge hit for the S4” who are you kidding? This won’t even effect .1% of their sales. I’m a techie guy, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest CM isn’t going to be creating a custom ROM for this handset. I’m buying it for all the features CM wouldn’t be able to give me anyways. Most of my android friends dont even have a clue what “Rooting” is either so how do you think this will be “A huge hit for the S4″… You sound like a HTC fanboy, hoping the S4 will fail… Well I’m telling you, it won’t lol
why in gods name would you root your nexus 7 and 10 but not your s3? #wtf
If you don’t own either one, then you wouldn’t understand. The Nexus 10 used to crash at least 4-5 times a day, so flashing AOKP (a more stable ROM) was a godsend. Now it crashes maybe 1-2 times a week. As for the Nexus 7, i wanted to be able to use an OTG cable for flash drives etc. AOKP again allows for me to do this amongst the other ludicrous things I can tinker around with the OS. As for the S3, didn’t I explain it? I have 2 devices with stock android, and I actually like Touchwiz on the GS3 and the Note 2. Its a nice change and plus I live the “smart” and “motion” features that come with touchwiz. Its also the most stable OS I’ve ever used on any android device.. There.. Is that OK?
Actually, in the case of the S3, most custom roms are based off the stock rom. There are a few AOSP roms based of CM, but most are custom stock roms with the bloatware removed and some additional optimizations. Rooting the S3 and removing the bloatware then replacing the stock launcher pretty much helps with most of the downsides of the skinned androids while keeping some of the nifty samsung tweaks.
on a side note, HTC would have better luck in the market if they supported external SD and replaceable batteries… The gimmick features of the Galaxy line are what appeal to the regular folks, but the things like lack of bootloaders, the SD and the batteries are what sell to the hacking community even more than CM support.
CM have come out and said they haven’t confirmed if they will or will not support the GS4 until it comes out. However, I can guarantee they probably will, as the GS4 will be the BIGGEST selling Android smartphone of 2013. In other words, its going to be their “bread and butter” device. So what do you lot have to say now? lol
Stop scaremongering. One sect does not speak for the entirety of CyanogenMod, and even if they had been given permission to make the announcement on CM’s behalf it wouldn’t not have happened via XDA.
CyanogenMod have commented on Team Hacksung’s opinion of supporting the GS4 by saying they do not announce support (or a lack thereof) for any phone before it has been released, and that all official CM announcements will come via the official CM G+, Facebook, Twitter and their blog – not XDA.
https://plus.google.com/+CyanogenMod/posts/7jywLJdswki