Last week’s user-submitted Custom ROM Friday went so smoothly, we’re doing it again! With so many different phones and tablets out there, we know it’s easy to have some great work fall through the cracks and into the black holes of the Internet, so here is your chance to make sure that favorite developer of yours is getting some spotlight. 

After the original DROID had finished its run as the top Android phone on Earth and we started to see new phones touch down on what seemed like a weekly basis, we also starting seeing a dip in the development scene. With so many phones, it was tough to pinpoint the best ROMs, best developers, and in our case, cover it on a regular basis. Also, phones these days are so incredibly powerful, that we rarely have to worry about overclocking to get better performance, tweak kernels to extend battery life (outside of the Galaxy Nexus), and remove custom OEM skins to fix a device. We understand that there is still an amazing ROM scene that is producing incredible features, but it’s just not as tight as it once was.

So as we do often, we will ask the status of your phone. Are you running a custom ROM or is your phone stock? And if you’d like, feel free to list out your device and specific ROM in the comments. If you are stock, be sure to tell us why.

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It’s an appreciated change of pace when a team of developers can simply state their goal. Over on the BAMF site, the developers intro the Paradigm ROM with, “When we set out to build this ROM, we wanted to keep the feel as stock as possible while adding as much functionality as possible. The primary concern was always stability and user experience.” That’s what a flasher likes to hear. From my short time with the ROM on my own Galaxy Nexus, I have found it to be a fantastic example of pure AOSP with the perfect mix of customizable options and system optimizations. 

With the choices for custom ROM builds seemingly never ending and constantly evolving thanks to the release of new Android OS versions, a reader wrote in hoping we could get the community’s feedback as to which ones are their favorites and are currently being run on their phones. We have asked this question before, but it has been a while and we’ve seen the launch of many new ROM’s thanks to Jelly Bean’s debut. 

Yea, we know – it’s been too long. For today’s custom ROM, we have Team Liquid’s Jelly Bean Liquid Smooth Alpha 6 for the Galaxy Nexus. Liquid’s goal is to create the smoothest and fastest ROM’s out there, while also being able to deliver plenty of visual customization options. Some of the custom features include 5 lockscreen targets, a custom kernel for overclocking, and notification bar toggles for those who need instant access to system settings. 

It’s no secret that the DL community is big into the root and ROM game. We have some of the most savvy of readers, but there is one among us who needs our help. His name is Davis and he is doing a school project. He needs to know why people choose to root their devices. Is it for the custom ROMs, themes, kernels, etc? Let’s help this guy out.

Why do you root your Android device?

The DROID RAZR has started to receive a bit more developer love lately, so we knew it was time to showcase some of the newest work we could find. What we have today is called, Black Widow ICS. It uses AOKP as a starting point, so you know it is going to be filled with options and customizable goodies for your eyes and fingers to play with. 

With the release of Android 4.0.4 to the Open Source Project, custom ROM developers have begun the scramble in working all of the newest features into their current work. One of the more well-known developers, Roman and his team from the Android Open Kang Project, have released Build 29 for the Galaxy Nexus and there are also builds floating around from other mentionable developers, inlcuding a stock 4.0.4 build from Birdman.

AOKP Build 29 | Stock 4.0.4

For downloads and flashing instructions, just click the thread link you wish to read up on and go from there. But do note, that when flashing a newer version of Android, you must wipe data/cache in order to have a clean install. We don’t want anyone bootlooping when trying to perform these tasks.

Cheers K!