CyanogenMod

Hello guys, and welcome to another review by Studience. Here, we'll tell you everything about the "CyanogenMod". Well, you might have seen the CyanogenMod on the back of phones like the OnePlusOne. But, one thing you do observe is that, this "CyanogenMod" works similar to Android OS, so what's special about this?

Technically, CyanogenMod is an open-source operating system for smart phones and tablet computers, based on the Android mobile platform. It is developed as free and open source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code. It is based on a rolling release development model.

CyanogenMod offers features and options not found in the official firmware distributed by mobile device vendors. Features supported by CyanogenMod include native theming support, FLAC audio codec support, an OpenVPN client, CPU overclocking and other performance enhancements, unlockable bootloader and root access, soft buttons and other "tablet tweaks", toggles in the notification pull-down (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS), and other interface enhancements.

CyanogenMod does not contain spyware or bloatware, according to its developers. CyanogenMod is also stated to increase performance and reliability compared with official firmware releases.

HISTORY

---

The first version of CyanogenMod was produced not all that long after the very first Android phone was released. In the UK that mobile was known as the T-Mobile G1, which went on sale back in 2008.

An exploit was found that let people fiddle with the phone’s insides, and shortly afterwards developer Steve Kondik started working on his own tweaked version of Android. And the first version of CyanogenMod was born. He caught the eye of Samsung and joined the company asa software engineer in 2011.

But that’s not the end of Steve’s story with CyanogenMod. As well as continuing to oversee Cyanogen while at Samsung, Kondik left the tech giant in March 2013. 

In September 2013, Kondik raised $7 million in venture capital funds to ‘go legit’ with CyanogenMod, with the aim of turning it from a nerdy internet mod to something that could be used in commercial products. It raised another 23 million dollars in December 2013, and Chinese leviathan of tech Tencent was one of the core backers. 

5 things you can do with CyanogenMod 11

---

1. Apply system-wide themes at the press of a button

One of the neatest features of CyanogenMod 11 is the theme installer. It’s dead accessible, and lets you thoroughly reskin your phone with just about zero effort. What’s better than customising your phone yourself? Getting someone else to the leg work for you, of course.

CyanogenMod 11 themes alter fonts, lock screen styles, app icons and even notification and alarm sounds. They effectively give your phone a complete reskin, without any of the residual wonkiness you often get with custom home launchers you can run on any Android phone.

2. Switch features on and off from the notification menu

Lots of people think Android offers quick feature switches in its drop-down notifications bar. But it doesn't - this is one of the features most commonly added in third-party versions of Android.

Normal Android 4.4 instead has a separate page of app switches. CyanogenMod has this page too, but you also get a quartet of your favourite feature switches on the default notifications page, where you get told when your mum gives you a Whatsapp prod.

3. Custom Profiles

CyanogenMod lets you set a whole bunch of different profiles that alter the behaviour of your phone. 

These profiles save settings for things like Bluetooth, mobile data and Wi-Fi, giving you pretty good control over how much juice your phone uses throughout the day. You can also tweak how notifications come through for SMS, emails and so on.

You can even make them trigger when your phone is docked with an NFC tag, or when it connects to a certain Wi-Fi network. It’s up to you to put in the initial legwork of dictating how these work, but they should prove extremely useful. You switch profiles manually from the power-off menu, just as you would when switching to aeroplane mode.

4. Tweak the screen calibration

CyanogenMod 11 adds a handy little screen customisation section in the Settings menu called Screen Color. This lets you tweak the look of your screen, fiddling with things like contrast and colour saturation. 

It even lets you flip about the hues of colours, although this generally results in a supremely unnatural-looking image. This display tweaker will come in very useful if you find your phone’s normal colours a bit oversaturated, or a little dull-looking. 

5. Advanced gestures

Many phones have little extra gestures these days, but with the latest version of CyanogenMod you get ones that don’t even require the screen to be on in order to register. We imagine this won’t be suitable for all phones, but it works well on the OnePlus One.

Draw a circle on the phone’s screen while it’s in standby and the camera will launch. When music is playing, a two-fingered vertical swipe will play/pause the audio, and left/right arrows drawn will switch tracks. The most unusual, though, is that drawing a V will turn the LED torch on. And there was us wondering why the flash kept on turning on in-pocket. You can turn these off if you’re not a gestures fan.

 Hope you liked this post too.....Please feel free to comment in the comment section below and share your views with us.

 For more posts and updates subscribe to our Newsletter and Like Us on Facebook: Studience