Five Best Android ROMs
Whether you're looking to upgrade an Android device forsaken by its
manufacturer or you just want more control over the phone or tablet you
own, you've probably gone looking for a new ROM. Rooting your phone is
the first step, but a new ROM will give you a completely new mobile OS,
and this week we're going to look at five of the best Android ROMs,
based on your nominations.
We took your nominations, tallied them up, and now we're back to
highlight the top five. It's important to note that not every ROM is
available for every device, and different ROMs are aimed at different
audiences—some of them are designed to upgrade the OS and others are
lean and mean installs to speed up your phone. Whichever you choose,
you'll have to make sure your device is supported by the developers
behind the ROM before installing.
CyanogenMod
CyanogenMod is arguably one of the (if not the) most installed Android ROM in the world, and for good reason. It offers a ton of great features, is available for more devices than most other ROMs of its type, and has the type of polish and support that makes it easy to fall in love with. There are builds of CyanogenMod for Android phones and tablets, and slowly but surely the developers behind CyanogenMod are rolling out Ice Cream Sandwich versions for devices whose manufacturers have given up on upgrading the device entirely. To boot, CyanogenMod includes features you won't find in stock Android, like support for OpenVPN, support for downloadable themes, more privacy tools, and more. You can find a list of supported devices here.
The Android Open Kang Project (AOKP) is a relative newcomer compared to
many of the other popular ROMs already available, but it's rapidly
growing in popularity. It offers many of the features that CyanogenMod
has, and at first blush you may mistake one for the other, but as soon
as you start looking at the options and add-ons, you'll see the
differences. AOKP has earned high marks for add-ons and tools that you
can't get in CM, centralized control over ROM options, and overall more
customization options than CM. At the same time, its development
community is smaller and it may not have the same polish and device
support that CyanogenMod has. Still, it's super-fast, it's stable, and
definitely worth a look. You can find a list of all supported devices here.
MIUI struck us
with how beautiful the user interface was and how elegant it made
Android look and feel. It's not the most feature-packed or hackable ROM,
but it's definitely one of the most customizable and elegant, and it's
seriously fast. MIUI started life as a modded version of Android
localized in China, but fans of the mod have since localized it for
dozens of languages and countries. It offers strong theme support,
beautiful stock apps, customizable lockscreens, support for GApps, and
complete root access. You're not going to get a wealth of niche features
here, but you will get a device that's much easier and more fun to use
once you install MIUI. You can find a list of supported devices here.
If you have a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy S or Galaxy S II,
Slim ICS may be the ROM for you. Not only will Slim ICS bring your
device up to Ice Cream Sandwich, it's also a super-thin, lightweight
installation that's remarkably easy to install, even though it's clearly
aimed at advanced users. Slim ICS already has GApps rolled in, so you
don't need to install them later. Where other ROMs try to add tons of
new features and tweaking options, Slim ICS is designed to trim the fat
down to the bare essentials and give you a fast and clean ICS
installation. It's only available for a handful of Samsung devices and
there's pretty much one developer and a few beta testers behind the
scenes, so don't expect a ton of feature additions or new devices, but
it is updated weekly and sports a good number of third-party mods.
Liquid Smooth ROMS are available for multiple devices, and while the
project started off with the Motorola Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Droid
Incredible, and HTC Thunderbolt, it's also available for the Galaxy
Nexus and a few other devices, although you'll have to poke around the
forums a bit to find them. The banner feature of Liquid is that it's
probably one of the fastest ICS ROMs available, faster even than the
stock install that comes on the Galaxy Nexus. You don't sacrifice
features for the speed, but the overall size of the ROM is still nice
and small, leaving more space for the apps and features you choose to
use, as opposed to ones forced on you. GApps are baked right in, and the
ROM offers theme support so you can customize it to your liking. All in
all, if you have a supported device, it's probably the leanest, meanest
ICS ROM you can download.
What's The Best Android ROM?
Total Votes: 8,761
No
honorable mentions this week, but you all nominated well over 60
different ROMs for consideration, so whatever ROM you settle on, make
sure it's a good match for the features you're looking for, the device
you own, and the version of Android you want to run. These may be your
top five, but they may not be the best for your specific device, so do
your homework!
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