By 
Yes, folks are still trying to get stock Android running on the crop of Samsung Galaxy S phones currently on the market. The Samsung Vibrant showed the most promise, but that project has been lagging. And now the Samsung Fascinate is seeing unofficial CyanogenMod 7 love.
It’s a port, and very unusable: most of the radios aren’t working, most of the external lights aren’t working, the cameras aren’t working, MMS isn’t working – you’d basically have a phone that could do almost nothing useful. Check XDA out for the full thing if you’re bored, but don’t come running to me if your phone explodes or anything. [via AC]
It seems Samsung products are pretty much useless to anyone who want’s android so they can customize their user experience.
This is why all Android phones should have the choice of stock Android or OEM shells. Why? Because as awesome as XDA and Cyanogen are, dealing with half-baked nightly builds sucks–granted their stable releases kick a**!
The author of this “port” took an un-finished ALPHA build of work being done by many people & incorporated it into his custom ROM. It needs to be pointed out that while it may have some CM7 inside it, the work’s not even officially sanctioned by Cyanogen at this point. Know why? BECAUSE IT’S NOT FINISHED YET. Cyanogen himself has commented on work like this being detrimental to the project.
CM7 for the SGS & it’s variants IS coming… but won’t be done & dusted until there’s been a final, & official, code review.
This was a really useless post as it is made very clear that the Rom is an alpha. At least have the courtesy to publish all the facts so that it is “real” reporting.
@dougau
You can customize it just as much as any other android phones. Currently, my captivate looks like a plain old gingerbread phone with the exception of the dialer, contact menu, and etc which not only look better but function better than the stock android dialer and contacts menu. To be honest, I was surprised at how much customization the Galaxy S phones had. I think it was BECAUSE they were so ugly that it forced people to learn how to theme and get creative and I’ve never seen a more friendly, helpful, dev community that is willing to help you learn how to do that stuff all on your own.
Incredible port is ugly too. WTF guys? Stock aesthetic, secret powers! Thats what custom ROMs should be about. Especially going forward as Google is really getting it’s shit together design wise.
@Andrew,
It helps if you read the comments. It also helps if the OP is better informed as to where this came from.
I don’t know why developers bother to post this crap. Keep it within your own developing circle, but don’t release it for others to download.
Their are plenty of other ways to put 2.2 on your Fascinate, and most of those work perfectly.
This is 2.3, but still unusable.
Are you serious? This is an alpha release and a work in progress. Punkkoas was nice enough to take up the project in the first place and release a rom for advanced users to test. He’s gotten a good amount of things working in a short period of time and continues to make quick progress. Is it really necessary to criticize the work of a developer who does this for free? Phandroid should be encouraging these guys as they help make our devices better. Thank you Punk Kaos for your hard work. Looking forward to updated releases of this.
International Galaxy S (GT-I9000) actually has a stable CM7. It’s sort of beta, but just the camera is missing. Everything else is super smooth and beautiful.
My wife has a Fascinate. I heard it’s getting an over-the-air update to 2.2 on the 22nd. Does anyone know if that’s confirmed?
//It’s a port, and very unusable: most of the radios aren’t working, most of the external lights aren’t working, the cameras aren’t working, MMS isn’t working – you’d basically have a phone that could do almost nothing useful.
Thats just f’ing hilarious. xD
No Cyanogenmod for the old Mytouch. LAME!
Man look… FUCK cyanogen mod whatever #. First off there plenty of good dev’s and rom out now for the galaxy s lineup. These dudes make promises that they can’t keep (blame wes). I was a big time fan of their work (g1) days. But I had to realize they only like htc phones. So when I say fuck them, Its because they put us on the back burner(non htc devices). Plus I always speak my mind always! I’m rocking a Samsung vibrant with team whiskey latest rom v1.2.1. Running at 1.4ghz linpack 18.74 quadrant 2066 so why would I care about his their again? They can mod my balls
And before you dick suckers fan boys start taking up for these dudes. Saying they do this for us. They do this in their spare time. They don’t get paid for this. First off they love doing this shit. The respect and recognition they get from the Android community makes them think they are rock stars. Second they get plenty of donations and free phones. So save me the bullshit! If I like a Rom, the developer will know how much I appreciate their work.
While I can appreciate these guys doing this for the android community in their spare time, I agree with the HTC comment. They do favor HTC over all the other brands. That said, it’s great to have a developer community such as XDA. I just think they should keep leaks like this between themselves and not post them for the public to download and screw up their phones. Let alone getting the public all hyped up over something that wont be bug free for quite awhile. It’s not that difficult to send your work to fellow developers without the whole world downloading it too. While their are numerous 2.2 leaks available for nearly every make and model, most of them (which XDA has released) still have bugs. So you trade off getting an OS earlier than the rest of the world, for say not being able to use your phones camera, or the inability to send a text message. To me, I need my phone fully functional at all times. I didn’t spend nearly 600 bucks to have a partially working phone just so I could say “I have froyo and you don’t”.
I also happen to know that most of these developers, while they do this in their spare time, do accept AND receive donations. So it’s not like they aren’t making any money for their troubles.
Didn’t some dev get a free phone and laptop to port this over like 4 months ago? What happened to that dude?
@ ToastnJam: I understand your point, but I think it’s great that they release everything they make, be it finished and stable w/ no bugs, or early alpha that hardly works.
First of all, when they release these things they make it perfectly clear if it’s an early build that has problems. People then can decide whether or not they want to try it out on their phone. The more people trying these roms, the faster and easier it is to locate different bugs (because everyone uses their phone slightly differently, the bugs are going to surface faster when you have many people all trying to do different things) and the quicker they get fixed. By only releasing these things to developers, they are effectively limiting the number of people who will be searching for ways in which to improve these roms.
Also, many people are willing to deal with certain bugs or deal with the loss of certain functions that they don’t use to gain access to functionality that may be available in a newer version (such as someone who never uses their phone’s camera, but would really benefit from a full flash player or app2sd).
I was thinking to fix the fragmentation issue maybe Google could look at taking on the task. What if every phone wanting to use Android was registered with Google. Google would assist in building a vanilla ROM for every device. After that the manufacturer can destroy it with their custom stuff we don’t want. Then the user always has the option to go to Android Market and have a tab for the available ROM’s.
I could download an update for say my Sense/Blur/Whateversamsungcallstheirshittyrom and Regular. This way those that want Sense, if HTC makes it, can have Sense. If those that want the HTC product but don’t, have the nice plain one available from Google. After that you’d have to go to custom roms from the likes of Cyanogen or such. Then if Google puts out Gingerbread, every device that hardware wise can run it now would have it up for download when ready. This way when it takes Samsung 6 months+ to maybe update hteir ROM they can do so and users at least have the Google vanilla option available if they want to go without the custom.
Yes it would suck for Google, I don’t even know of this is feasible. It may help in eliminating some of the super long update times from Carriers/manufacturers though.
Obviously hardware is part of the issue with fragmentation. My poor G1 was done at 1.6 and has had JesusFreke -> Cyanogen on it since to keep updated.
Yes…all Android phones should be shipping with Vanilla as an option upon boot or root. Im more than happy with my TeamWhiskey ports!
What a horrible article. Way to be a dick to Kaos. He’s a fantastic dev. He has Gingerbread and CM working without any source. He and the other devs had to reverse engineer the RIL and build their own kernels(again, without any source). It is far from easy. I’m surprised at how quickly he got this done, and that it’c actually in a working state. And he’s working on fixing the issues. I’d like to see you do better, Quentyn. Otherwise, don’t bash someones work.
I think 2.3 is way more ugly than 2.2.
I have used CM7, but I think Gingerbread is worse than Froyo. I can’t wait for Android 2.4 because 2.3 totally sucks!
Reason y it doesnt come root is so that people wont brick their phones in the 1st 14 days
I agree that CyanogenMod 7 Port is not usable for now, i cant figure out its function yet
Wow, Quentyn. Harsh words for an alpha build, especially knowing that it came from punk.kaos, one of the most respected devs on XDA, which btw you failed to mention. Kaos is pretty quick with these things, and lots more things will be working soon. He made a lot of progress on the hardware with CM6 before switching to CM7. That’s quite something, since the source code Samsung provided for this phone is pure junk. Just watch and see. I’m willing to bet that by the end of February, most all of the hardware will be working.
Obviously lots of things dont work as it CLEARY says its still alpha. Your post, Kennemer, is fairly sad as you make it seem as porting is so easy.
fascinating
I used CM for my G1, and that was great because that phone was so underpowered. But I wouldn’t ever go back to custom ROMs again. It takes waaayy too much effort to maintain the phone, and if I missed a few days of reading through the forums, I was behind. Ultimately, if I didn’t spend a good 10 to 15 hours per week on my ROM issues, then I got behind. Now, I could never upgrade my old G1, because I’ve not been following the maintenance/upgrade threads, and the radio and SPL changes are way beyond my ability. Coupled with the incredibly arrogant dicks that populate the customer boards, I could never get an actual step by step process on upgrading from my current state, which is 6.1, with an older radio and SPL.
No way. Not for me. I’ll stick to production ROMs where I only have to turn it on or off, and then use it as a tool.
As has been previously stated, this is an ALPHA release of a PORT of a [cyanogen]MOD. CAPS FOR EMPHASIS!
This is monumental news for Fascinate owners. Official froyo hasn’t even been released and devs are already working on gingerbread.
I tested this ROM myself and found it to be rather usable. It works just fine as a phone, sms works just fine and data works just fine. Those are the essentials, for me anyway. This obviously wasn’t meant for daily use but hardware patches are coming soon; it won’t be long before its fully functional.
Not sure what the author of this article was talking about, this phone has no external lights. Just goes to show he needs to do a little research before posting an article that bashes the work of an amazing developer, aka, punkkaos.
This article is horrible. I have had the Verizon Samsung Fascinate for about 2 months now and I absolutely love it. I have had a few other Android phones in the past, but this one definitely is my favorite. I have yet to see any other phones that can match the screen that the Samsung Galaxy phones have. I think that the Fascinate is pretty customizable, at least enough for me.
I have cm7 rc1 on my incredible and i really like it. There are some awesome features in gingerbread like pinning phone numbers to your home screen – the battery life seems better etc and I have all my widgets working to make it look very sense like. The reason one dev may seem to favor one phone over another is simple – they only have that brand. If you want to send him Galaxy S phone to dev on then okay otherwise – stfu. Besides the new nexus is a galaxy s running 2.3 so why can’t you have it now? Why not yell at other devs who have nexus phones?
get a clue.