I started working on the Droid 3 back in August of 2011. Since then, I picked up several other Motorola OMAP devices and have done my best for the community to make them work on custom ROMs such as CM, AOKP and others.
My life today, is overflowing with Android. Android during breaks at work, Android from about 8pm to 3am in the morning. Android on the weekends while kids are at soccer, etc. I have Android dreams :P Needless to say, I need to make some changes.
It is with a bit of sadness, that in November, I’m ending my custom ROM support on the Motorola OMAP devices listed below:
Droid 3
Droid Bionic
Droid RAZR
Droid 4
Why end support for these devices?
There are variety of reasons actually. The main being: time. Or lack of it (mentioned above). And honestly, I haven’t been paying them the attention they need anyway, so better to just stop the bleeding and let someone either take over as maintainer on CM or end the support all together. November would make all of the devices, 2 years old or more (with the exception of the Droid 4).
The other reason is lack of support. There were very few OMAP devs a year ago. Today, there are none. To support an OMAP device means that every problem has to land right on your shoulders. Very little help comes from Texas Intruments or other devs anymore.
Lastly, these devices are aging, and I’m guessing more and more users have upgraded or are looking at upgrading in the next few months. Time for me to move on.
What does this mean for you?
Not too much, actually. Find a nice stable version of the ROM you love and use it! Over the long term: this probably means no Android 4.4 and beyond. :(
When I say “ending my custom ROM support”, I mean no more device updates, bugfixes, etc. This mainly has to do with custom ROMs like CM or others. The ROMs that are out there aren’t going to magically disappear, and devs may or may not stop supporting those custom ROMs for the Moto OMAP devices.
I *will* probably continue to run Safestrap updates for a while yet.
This will not affect the Motorola Droid RAZR-HD, or some of the other newer devices I’ve picked up recently for Safestrap support.