The Wileyfox Storm and the Wileyfox Swift are two affordable but high-bang-to-buck devices currently available in Europe. These devices run on Cyanogen OS, and naturally, are very easy to play with on the software side of things. Keeping in mind this aspect, we now have XDA forums for the devices to bring together software tinkerers for both the devices!
Google is hosting a big discount promotion for the holidays that include up to 70% off in in-app purchases for select games, game titles on sale from $0.99, up to 50% off applications and app subscriptions, whole albums discounted down to $0.99, lots of HD movies on sale for $5.99 and sometimes lower, deep discounts on books and a collection of TV shows to choose from too. There’s a lot of material at low price, which should appease a lot of people.
Samsung devices are widely recognized by Android enthusiasts to tout superb hardware but unfortunately acceptable software. Touchwiz – love it or hate it, you’re generally stuck with it if you buy a Samsung Galaxy device.
Thanks to the efforts of the development community on XDA, you can have the option to switch over to an AOSP-based ROM – if you’re willing to wait. Most flagship devices on the market have been blessed to operate on Snapdragon SoCs, making it easier for developers to port AOSP over to their hardware thanks to the extensive documentation provided to developers on the hardware. However, Qualcomm’s blunder with the Snapdragon 810 caused Samsung to drop its use of the SoC in favor of exclusively using its own in-house Exynos SoC.Enthusiasts looking to use Google’s stock Android software in place of Touchwiz have generally had to wait many months for the developer community to port AOSP to their hardware, thanks to complications arising from a lack of documentation for Samsung’s Exynos brand of SoCs. That hasn’t deterred developers from tackling the issue anyways, and thanks to XDA Senior Member tdcfpp we now have our first AOSP-based ROM booting on the Samsung Galaxy S6.
According to a post by the developer responsible for the initial port, the major hurdle that they have yet to get past is getting multi-boot working because the developer cannot continue testing the port as it would require removing the Android HardwareComposer (enabling GUI rendering via the GPU) in order to check the FrameBuffer. Doing so would currently cause the device to enter into a bootloop, making further testing more difficult for the developer.
Clearly, the team’s work is far from over, but it’s important to show them your support if you’re interested in eventually tasting the Marshmallow-flavored fruits of their labour.
