Better ROM's? Nexus vs Popular Phones

[doron]

Hi guys,

I made my first Android phone purchase last Summer and went with the Evo 3D since it was the fastest phone on Sprint at the time.

Having a history of building computers, running Linux, and installing every hack available on the Palm Pre, the importance of ROM availability quickly trounced the need to have the latest hardware.

I soon discovered that running a phone with such unique hardware makes it very difficult to develop for, since HTC does not release any drivers. agrabren and his crew are only now cracking the phone to allow us to run pure AOSP with working 3D and 4G...almost a year after release. While I was happily running MIUI GB for months, I'd like to be able to choose a phone that has ROM's which can take advantage of all the hardware features.

My question is whether a Nexus phone or the current popular phone (Galaxy SIII in this case) is more likely to have support for the latest and most amount of ROM's with everything working. I guess the point is whether the openness of the phone or the amount of users and dev's it has is the biggest factor.

Thank you!

 

[mrsbelpit]

I went from a hugely popular phone (Vibrant) to the Nexus. There was plenty of ROMs for the Vibrant, but the main problem with them is not everything worked. This can be attributed to Samsung not updating past Froyo, therefore there was never any Gingerbread source dropped for this particular phone. I tried GB ROMs, and ICS ROMS, but I always went back to a Froyo ROM because everything worked.

I honestly still don't trust the Samsung/carrier combination to support American Samsung phones for 2 years. Add to that that my wifi only GT 10.1 still doesn't have ICS (yes, there are ROMS, but none that have the FFC working, one of the things I use most, due to no camera drivers) and I don't see myself getting anything other than Nexus devices in the future.

 

[doron]

Yeah, my next question was going to be about a company like Samsung claiming to be as friendly to devs as possible (I believe they changed their policies for the better starting with the SGII). I guess unless it's a nexus you'll never get access to all the hardware libraries, etc.

 

[sntaylor]

As an s2 owner, fairly newly rooted, I have seen there are some great developers for this phone, many of whom though are just moving onto the s3.... So it can't be too bad a choice.lol