CyanogenMod 9 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Stable Builds Now Available

A late night tweet from CyanogenMod revealed CM9 stable ROMS are now ready for consumption. This marks the end of the CM9 branch, moving forward only critical bug fixes will be merged. Earlier in the night they only released it for the Galaxy Nexus, but now the majority of Cyanogenmod’s supported devices are ready for download. Moving forward the CyanogenMod team will focus solely on CM 10 Jelly Bean and maintenance of the CM 7 codebase.

Many of you may be wondering why CM 9? Why not give up on it since the team is heavily into CM 10 development? The simple answer is the CyanogenMod team does not like to leave things unfinished. They don’t profit from this at all, and the pure satisfaction of completing a goal is the largest reward. Now, to be more in depth; CM 9 serves as a “release suitable for the masses,” and for those who will not have 100% functioning builds of CM 10 immediately. This is actually really great if you’re not the type of person who is the “early tester” that downloads previews, alphas, betas, or nightly’s.

So, there you have it, I am curious to see how many of you were on CM 7 before this and if you were chomping at the bit for something new and stable. Let us know in the comments!

source: CyanogenMod

Samsung Epic Touch 4G Gets Official MIUI ROM

MIUI is one of the more popular ROMS out there. While at first one would confuse it with that of the iOS it’s so much more than that. Well until now those with a Samsung Epic Touch 4G on Sprint weren’t able to play with this ROM. In order to run this ROM you need to make sure that you are rooted. So hit the source and get your taste of MIUI. Let us know what you think.

The CyanogenMod Team Wants You to Weigh, Do You Want a CM App Store for Rooted Apps?

I know what you’re thinking. Why the heck do we need yet another app store on our phones, what with Amazon, GetJar, and the Android Market and a slew of other apps that do this same thing. However, I think you’ll want to hear me out on this one because this proposes to be a different kind of app store. Here’s the back story.

Recently Koush, the man behind ClockworkMod Recovery and ROM Manager, came out with a tethering app that bypassed the need for a tethering plan and one that did so without the need for root access. While there are other apps that do the same thing, Koush is known for bringing us very good software. Well it wasn’t long before carriers banned the ability to access this app in the Android Market as they did with other tethering apps. It’s those moves done by carriers that spurred this article to begin with. So here’s the deal.

Koush, and the rest of the CyanogenMod team want to hear from you. They want to know if you think it’s a grand idea for them to develop their own app store for rooted apps. This app store would be for those apps that received the ban hammer of injustice from the overly powerful carriers. As Koush puts it:

 ”Apps removed from the Market includes, one click root apps, emulators, tether apps, Visual Voicemail apps, and more. These are all completely legal (Nintendo emulators are fine, ROMs are NOT, there is a distinction).”

He approached Amazon but they turned him down, so their best strategy is to go forward with an appstore of their own that features all those apps that were once available in the Android Market but has since disappeared along with the apps already available in the Android Market itself. The best part is that this wouldn’t be exclusive to that of the CM ROM and would be open to all ROMS. Of course the CM team would receive a bit of the proceeds made from the paid apps as a way to supplement funding for the growing server usage and store maintenance.

So what do you think? Is this a great idea or should CyanogenMod focus on other aspects? Don’t just let us know, head over to their Google+ page and let them know as well.

MIUI Lockscreen comes to the Android Market as MiLocker

MIUI is one of those love or hate custom ROMS, but I’m a sucker for lockscreens. WidgetLocker is probably the coolest one out there, but it looks the guys at MIUI want to give it a run for the money with the highly customizable lockscreen from the MIUI ROM. It’s now available in the Android Market as a free app, which means everyone can enjoy it, including all the non Hackers.

There are a bunch of themes that you can download from within the app. They include iPhone styles to the zipper style pictured above. Of course, you can’t forget the Ice Cream Sandwich themes as well.

If you take a look at the comments in the Android Market, you will notice a lot of people unhappy with the permissions for reading Gmail and SMS messages. The reason for this is so the app can display them as part of the lockscreen so put your worries aside and head over to the Android Market via one of the links below and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Android Market Link

Major Update for ADW Launcher EX Released in Both Birthday and 10 Billion App Download Celebration, Available for $0.10

If you haven’t heard of ADW Launcher then you are either new to the Android OS or you don’t use your Android phone for much. ADW Launcher is probably one of the more famous of the custom home launchers available and has been used in some of the more famous ROMS out there, like CyanogenMod. The free version has been around for a while but it wasn’t until a year ago that Anderweb released a pro version of his famous launcher known as ADW Launcher EX. It had everything one loved about the free version, however added some new cool features.

Well, today marks a big day for ADW Launcher EX as it is its one year birthday celebration, and just in time to for Google’s 10 Billion App Download Extravaganza. With its birthday, the launcher comes with some major upgrades. Also in celebration of the Android Market’s milestone, the launcher is available for just $0.10. While normally it is available for roughly $3.32 (Euro Conversion) this makes the premium launcher a steal.

For those of you that are interested in replacing your current launcher or were holding off on purchasing this one, I would recommend everyone going to the Android Market link below to check it out because $0.10 is a steal for this.  Also if you are interested in seeing what has changed or been added hit the break below. 

Features and Improvements:

• A new unified Dock bar with both the combined superpowers of the previous ones:

• Easily drag and drop icons into it.
• Unlimited icons support with paginated scrolling
• Options stretch, scale, show reflections, change the background image…
• Easy icon management by double tapping them.
•  Action to show/hide the dock at a glance via gestures/launcher actions

•  Easier and more user friendly folders.

• Drag a desktop icon over another one to auto create a new folder
• Visual representation of folder contents with theming support
• Options to choose how the folder contents scroll and behave like you do with the app drawers
• Single/multi row auto fitting support

• New desktop management system while moving items.

• Easier visualization of desktop and drag operations
• Easier trash can operation

• New desktop indicator inspired by IceCream Sandwich

• Improved compatibility with ICS devices

• Use of hardware acceleration on specific features when possible.

• Persistence of the ActionBar visibility on android >3.x tablets by the “hide/show status bar” gesture or launcher action.

• Usual bug fixes and performance improvements

• More to come!!!

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Android Market Link