Custom ROMs Explained: Past, Present & Future

What are custom ROMs?

A custom ROM is an aftermarket firmware production based on the AOSP (Android Open-Source Project) code provided by Google.

Custom ROMs are generally developed to enhance user interface, add new features, and try to provide stock like user experience.

Generally custom ROMs’ developers try to provide some of the following benefits: -

Device Support: It can run on wide range of devices.
Pixel Features: Some of them mainly focus to provide some of the exclusive to pixel features.
Stability: Most of them only focus on stability and bug fixing.
Privacy and Security: Almost every custom ROM focuses on privacy and Security but some of them escalates it to next level by moving away from Google services partially.

History of custom ROMs?

To understand History of custom ROMs better let's divide it to 3 parts: -

Cyanogen Mod era
Cyanogen Inc
Emergence of Lineage OS

Cyanogen Mod Era

Cyanogen Mod is nothing, but the precursor of a very famous custom ROM known as Lineage OS, development of Cyanogen Mod began in the year 2009 at the XDA Developers.

Stefanie Kondik, also known as Cyanogen, collaborated with the contributors to create a custom ROM that can run on a variety of smartphones, even if the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) had dropped the support for the device.

HTC Dream also known as the T-Mobile G1 was the first device to receive support for this ROM, an XDA member named Jesus Freke helped to evolve the firmware build.

Cyanogen Mod introduced many features such as FLAC support, notification toggles and as well as GUI powered overclocking that are now common features of the Vanilla Android.

It is estimated that when Cyanogen Mod was on its peak that is between years 2012-2013 at least 50 million devices were running Cyanogen Mod, that makes it the largest non-OEM firmware for Android.

Along with other innovative features Cyanogen Mod was also strongly focused on Privacy and Security which is thankfully carried on by its successors.

Cyanogen Inc.

As Cyanogen Mod was completely open source, which means that it was hard to monetize and the developers were only working on it for passion but in the year 2013, Kondik explored ways to monetize and commercialize her work. She started creating versions to create versions of Cyanogen Mod for OEMs that they can integrate directly into their devices.

However, things began to change, and the final version of Cyanogen Mod was version 14, based on Android 7.0 Nougat.

Emergence of Lineage OS

After the end of Cyanogen Mod era, Lineage OS carried forward the work of Cyanogen Mod, and provided the spirit of customization, stability, and community-driven development for ROM enthusiast.

Why Custom ROMs emerged?

Custom ROMs was not always a thing, but it emerged as a response to the limitations imposed by the manufacturers and carriers to the user. Thanks to the Android Open-Source nature it allowed developers to tinker and modify the code as they want which led to the creation of custom firmware tailored to specific devices, which ultimately opened door for users to completely personalize their experience.

The main reason why people loved, or I should say still loves the idea of custom ROM is: -

It gave breathing life to older smartphones

Everyone wants to be updated but after some period of time manufacturers would end official support to smartphone which means no software updates including security and bugfix updates that’s why custom ROMs became the first choice for people who always wanted latest features and security updates as well as tons of customization features.

What is the state of custom ROMs in 2024?

After all of that one might ask that nowadays manufacturers are providing descent official supports to devices and brands like Samsung is adding tons of customization features to their android skin and are also focusing on privacy, then will people actually void their smartphone’s warranty and take risk to install custom ROMs?

The one-word answer to the question is “Yes” and I am one of them just for an example, I have an 8-year-old smartphone from Lenovo the last major update it received was of android 7 but with the help of GSIs (more about it late) it is running on android 12 which still provides me a nice experience.

The other reason may be stock experience and a bloatware free smartphone, nowadays almost every brand has their own unique Android skin ( for example One UI, MIUI, Color OS) and all of them are extremely modified, tracks user every time and comes preinstalled with a lot of bloatware some of them being impossible to uninstall, that’s why people who are disgust with those types of practices and want to taste stock Android they are seeking towards Custom ROMs.

Problems with custom ROMs

First of all, Android smartphone market is so versatile that it is very hard for the developers to develop and maintain each of those devices, if you try to find any officially supported custom ROM for your device there is a very probability that you will be unable to find one.

Even if a developer develops and maintains custom ROM for a device it is purely passion because there is no way of direct monetization that means when passion dies the support for the device also dies.

It is a very risky task to do it may also brick a device permanently and even after successful flash it may not work as intended because bugs like no IMEI, no Wi-Fi & Bluetooth and some sensors not working are quite common and takes months for these types of bugs to be fixed.

While custom ROMs provides customization and features it voids warranty because it includes steps like rooting (Old days: Now it is not necessary) and Unlocking OEM settings in developer options.

What is the future of Custom ROMs?

I agree it is true that brands like Samsung & Google provides multiyear updates to their smartphones but many brands like realme & Motorola lacks behind, just for instance Android 15 is on the horizon but most of the Motorola phones hasn’t even received Android 14 update yet, that is why for people who want their smartphones to be on latest versions of Android, custom ROMs aren’t going anywhere.

Even if every smartphone manufactures decides to provide 4+ years of software update, you can’t disagree that custom ROMs serves as an innovation playground, where developers experiment with new features, optimizations, and UI enhancements, here are some of the features that were first introduced in Custom ROMs but made their way in mainstream Android.

Customizable Status Bar and Navigation Bar

Custom ROMs like Lineage OS always allowed their users to tweak the status bar and navigation bar extensively which led to the inclusion of some over-the-top features like status bar icons, quick settings and gesture navigation into to AOSP.

Theming Engine

Custom ROMs pioneered theming engines that allowed users to change the entire look of their android smartphones, which everyone knows made it way to AOSP and was highlighting feature of Android 12.

In theory, for next few years Custom ROMs aren’t going anywhere because of following three core reasons: -

Every smartphone brand ship their smartphone with their own Android Skin which will always continue to collect personal data because they want to earn profit from you as much, they can, that is why security concerned people will always support and will continue to use custom ROMs.
Many people are always excited and curious about latest features and Android versions called “Enthusiasts”, for them custom ROMs will always be a place to try out new features and tweaks.
Unlike commercial skins like One UI & Color OS, custom ROMs are open source which helps newbie developers to get started, follow their passion & learn new things, they will always continue to develop custom ROMs.

Custom ROMs will be used but not much as 2011.

That was all for this blog, thanks for reading.