Because of quirks with corpuscle radios and how Android was ahead set up, custom ROM abutment for Galaxy S phones has been dispersed these accomplished few years. It's been about absent for US customers, while all-embracing users would see some ROMs. Acknowledgment to Android Oreo's Project Treble, this will all be alteration soon.
One of the better complaints with Samsung accessories has been TouchWiz or Samsung Experience and how far off it is from AOSP. While some barter like Samsung's customization, a dream of abounding has been to amalgamate the abstemiousness of banal Android with the abundant accouterments of Galaxy S phones. This ability assuredly become a absoluteness as a ancillary aftereffect of Project Treble, which was advised to break addition problem, fragmentation.
Why Galaxy S Custom ROM Abutment Has Been Lacking
Currently, Samsung Galaxy S alternation phones accept bound custom ROM support, but for affidavit specific to anniversary variant. For US customers, all Galaxy S alternation accessories use Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset to ensure affinity with Sprint and Verizon's CDMA networks. In addition move to allay US carriers, Samsung has bound the bootloader on all Snapdragon variants of their flagships.
This agency the alone way to beam any affectionate of actionable firmware on a Snapdragon Galaxy is by application an accomplishment that unlocks the bootloader, which is acutely rare. So far, no accomplishment we've appear beyond has offered a way to absolutely alleviate the bootloader acknowledgment to Samsung Knox, the enterprise-level security platform. In added words, you ability acquisition a way to beam custom firmware on the arrangement partition, but not the cossack or accretion partitions, for example.
Furthermore, because an accomplishment is the alone way to alleviate the bootloader, Samsung is consistently patching these vulnerabilities. Therefore, any accomplishment that formed ahead may not assignment later, abrogation users with a bind — amend to the latest adaptation and accumulate your phone secure, or abandon the amend to accumulate your apart bootloader.
For the blow of the apple (and those who accept to import), Galaxy S alternation accessories use Samsung's own Exynos chipset. These accessories appear with an apart bootloader, so you'd anticipate aflame custom ROMs wouldn't be a problem. However, Samsung doesn't broadcast any affidavit for their Exynos processors, authoritative the development of ROMs acutely difficult. Essentially, developers charge use balloon and absurdity to accredit functionality for their ROMs. But that isn't the alone problem.
Samsung doesn't broadcast disciplinarian binaries for this variant. By default, the disciplinarian binaries alone assignment with TouchWiz. After publication, developers are larboard to TouchWiz-based ROMs back the disciplinarian binaries can't be adapted for AOSP-based ROMs. In short, while you're able to install a custom ROM on abounding Exynos Galaxy models, it's about aloof a slimmed bottomward adaptation of the banal firmware — not absolutely custom. This is area Project Treble comes in.
Project Treble FTW
With Project Treble, Google has attempted to fix the botheration of breach in Android. For years, Android users accept been bedeviled with abandoned phones that accept one or two updates in their absolute lifespan. Alike worse, these updates would about aloof be bug fixes, with alone the top flagship phones accepting abounding adaptation updates.
One of the capital causes of this affair was the new Android adaptation actuality adverse with assertive accouterments components. The way Android was set up before, there was no break amid the accouterments cipher and the OS framework. Therefore, back a new adaptation came out, the accouterments bell-ringer had to adapt a cogent allocation of cipher to accomplish it accordant with the new software.
With Project Treble, these two elements are now separated. The bell-ringer accomplishing contains all the hardware-level cipher provided by the vendors. Google is alive with partners, such as Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek, to accommodate them with a "Vendor Test Suite" (VTS) that ensures advanced compatibility. Therefore, vendors who are adjustable with VTS can now bear the latest adaptation of Android by artlessly afterlight the framework.
For Project Treble-enabled devices, already Google releases a new adaptation of Android, an uncompromised AOSP ROM will be able to run on the accessory after any issue, as continued as the bootloader is unlocked. This is why Exynos users (and alone Exynos users) accept account for celebration.
Google is acute that all accessories aircraft with Android Oreo apparatus Project Treble, and the 2018 Galaxy S calendar will address with Oreo. Therefore, as continued as Samsung doesn't absolutely bead the brawl somehow, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ will be absolutely adjustable and acquire the allowances of Treble. This claim is not continued to phones that update to Oreo, which is why S8 users (even those with Exynos chipsets) still accept bound ROM support.
With the new Exynos Galaxy S9 models and their apart bootloaders, custom ROM developers can advantage Project Treble to finer abolish TouchWiz and actualize an AOSP-based ROM after anguish of compatibility, back all the accouterments should already be compatible.
For US customers, all isn't lost. Project Treble's absolute ambition of abbreviation breach should still be achieved, arch to faster adaptation updates for S9 devices. I do accent should, as it's still abundantly abased on OEMs and carriers who can booty their candied time adjusting and testing their bark and blame out the update. Are you aflame about the Galaxy S9? Do you currently use a custom ROM? Let us apperceive in the comments below.
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