A RAZR, Motorola phones and Hashcode: State of the Union

Posted by hashcode0f on February 2, 2012
Posted in: Android.

As most of you who follow me on Twitter have heard, I’m getting a RAZR today.

It was a generous gift by the DroidRZR.com community, and I am thankful to be getting it.

Why get a RAZR? What’s the deal? Am I going to stop Droid 3 development? Rumor has it that I also have a Droid Bionic.. is that true?

No I’m not stopping development for Droid 3.

Read on.


Lately, I’ve been considering the pace of the cell phone market and Android growth.  Sadly, we’ve all seen phones become obsolete 2 months after they were released.  And these are GOOD phones, that can run anything out there today.  Add to that the fact that development on these phones is so spread out, it’s hard sometimes to feel good about staying with Motorola and not jumping ship to the Galaxy Nexus or some phone which is the dev pick of the week.

I’d like to ask the rhetorical question:

Q: How do we encourage MORE development across what is essentially 3-4 phones in 5 months?

A: I HAVE A PLAN.

  1. The first step is getting a stable ICS running on ALL of them.  Especially, the phones who have the most developers / themers and modders.  That’s where it starts.  Get someone who wants to create something a nice blank canvas.
  2. That “canvas” happens to be a 960×540 sized phone screen.  All of these phones are setup NEARLY the SAME when it comes to the Android OS and the graphics that runs on it.  And they all face the same challenges getting ICS up and running on them.
  3. I will personally get involved in helping to port ANY AOSP/CM9 ROM from the phone that it was created on to the others.  OR educating those willing on how to port over ROMs from 1 phone to another. 

SO if we have 3-4 phones worth of developers pumping out ROMs, THEMES and MODS.. why shouldn’t we have more stuff going on here than any other group of phones out there?

The answer is simple: we should and WILL.

Some keys to successfully pulling this off:

  • When you port someone else’s work to a different phone: KEEP THE ORIGINAL CREATOR’S “BY LINE” INTACT.  Sure, add yourself as the person who did the port.  But give credit where credit is due.  Hey, if I knew I could do something for 1 phone but have it possibly end up on 3 others.. I’d be that much more interested in doing it.
  • Stick together, and help each other out.  If you know of a solution to a problem and you see someone asking for help, why not help them?  They could be on their way to creating the most BADASS ROM ever.
  • Keep it fun.  No drama.  Nothing kills development faster than drama.  We’re all adults (or close).  Why not just discuss it and work it out?

SO, summary time:

I have a Droid 3, Bionic and a RAZR.  And I fully intend to use each one to help get us to my Master Plan(tm) (see above).

26 comments on “A RAZR, Motorola phones and Hashcode: State of the Union”

  2. Yo Hash…I can help with Droid 3 builds if you need to focus on another. I'm not really a developer, but I can build/compile/test etc. I am capable of learning if there are things you want to teach me. Hit me up on XDA

  3. Just like to say, I 100% agree with you, and am glad we have someone who is willing to lead the way on this. I want to give my full support, and, if possible, my own time and effort to see this move forward. The goal here is incredible, and the more devices that we can get on this porting scheme, the better off we are as a whole. I'd be truly surprised if the Droid 4 isn't able to be added here. Motorola has made some of the best hardware available, and we should do our best to unleash its potential. Maybe they'll wake up then, and give us free reign to do our thing ;-)

  4. Same as Bob above Hash, I have both a D3 and a Bionic and would be more than willing to help out with any testing or whatever else I could do. I want to learn to develop software and I think these phones may just give me that extra kick I need to pick up a book. Thanks for all your hard work, Looking forward to the Beta!

  6. Thanks for everything HashCode. I'm a developer and trying to get into android dev and mod dev. Do you have any tips and hints?

  9. I have a Droid 3 (VZW xt862 in GSM mode) and a Razr (Mex GSM xt910) so i can test anything you throw at them.. also i will maybe have a Droid 4 when it comes Out so you should include thet in the master plan. hehehe i could also learn whatever you can teach to develop. just hope i can get the time to learn and work on helping !!

  10. HASHCODE, I assume that the CM9/ICS Droid 3 Beta 1 Will be coming out today seeing that you said that we would see it this week. And thus seeing its the end of the week, im dying to see the NEW CM9/ICS DROID 3 Beta 1 COMING OUT TODAY!!! IM DYING TO BE ABLE TO FINALLY USE MY CAMERA !!!! GO HASHCODE! I CANT WAIT FOR ITS RELEASE TODAY!!!!!

  13. I am currently working on a port for the D3, tried to get incontact with you through twitter but never responded to me and I needed your help, if you can please respond to me xD msg on on twitter@khrissssy

  14. I agree with a lot of your plan. In the desktop world, we have a CPU that hasn't changed since the Apollo program (I'm exaggerating but not too much), and drivers for almost all devices are available and (most important) stable across OS versions. The UI doesn't have to cater to idiosyncracies of the kewl device du jour. If that kind of stability could be brought to the world of pocket computers, it would really improve the efficiency of developers, eliminating repetitive reverse engineering of device after device. It would also cut into the manufacturers' and carriers' control over the product, and their revenue when a "must have" phone comes out a few months after the competitor's former market leader. In the desktop and server world you don't see that; it's reasonable to move an older machine into a secondary role such as backups and run it for a decade. I do have an issue with "that canvas is a 960x540px screen". Tablets running Android, and CyanogenMod, are overtaking the closed source overpriced market leader, and while a small screen doesn't suit me, there are users for whom it's appropriate to sacrifice pixels for smallness. On the web my department has client screens ranging from 320x320px to 2560x1920px and our pages have to look good on all of them, and some users have vision problems (ADA compliance), so I'd suggest some design rules for any UI: lay it out with percentage dimensions, obey the user's font size choice with percent adjustments for bigger or smaller elements, and render labels through the font engine instead of making bitmap pictures of text. Your plan to build a stable CM9/ICS upper layer is excellent, and I'll do my small part to make it happen, and I thank you for your large part in it.

  16. I have been doing this android root and flash thing since day one. Been through several phones and have never seen a phone so locked down as the bionic. Safstrap and 2 systems, I mean it's crazy! It has inspired me to start learning the development side of things so I can help make a potential phone an awesome phone instead of being a bum waiting on developers to release roms . I am ready and willing for your teachings and guide lines. I am dragon droid on xda. That's my most active account. Hope I get graced with your knowledge

  18. Hash man, I <3 you so much. I check the d3 forum daily for your newest updates. I would have quit the moto community a long time ago if not for you. (Faylix – thb hack kid)

  23. Hey Hash I believe that you are awesome and that your contributions to the Motorola phones have been greatly appreciated and HashofCode has become a detrimental to deb's close and beyond alike.I can't agree with you more about sticking together for the sake of future developments..You are the man and I am very glad that you are on our team.Keep up the good work!1iphone3gs,3Droid Razors,1 Droid3!!!

  24. The success of your port of CM9 has changed my mind about my Droid3. I used to think I made a mistake and should have stayed with the Atrix until I could afford the Nexus, but now I am actually keeping the Droid3 for a while. I really prefer to have a keyboard for putting in complex password and for writing longer notes/emails. Thank you for your work and vision. Hopefully everyone supports the DEV and test/sends logs and keeps the dumbass comments and questions to a minimum. Speaking of, we should get a list of a few moderators who can work together to keep the users post out of the dev forum on XDA.

  25. Hey man, any chance i get get you to maybe give me and in getting started? i've been trying to get dhacker29's code down and compiled so i can start working on the camera and bt issues (yes there are BT issues, quite bad in my opinion). but i can't, i've downloaded his tree and its seems all kind of broken….what do i need to do?

  26. let me know any way i can help! i have a droid2 and access to a droid3 and about to get the droid4 today or tomorrow (verizon 2nd day shipping is NOT 2nd day, oh well its free :) and i have a new LUbuntu server facing the internet and an old Linux Mint server also facing the net both on 24/7 for now on a slow cable connection. email me if I can help!

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