Buying Guide

Long before you start modding a device, you really want to start off on the right foot. Get the right device, and you will save yourself lots of time and frustration later on.

Stance

The development stance of a device determines how many roadblocks the manufacturer has placed to stop modding on that device. It is not the same as ease of modding, but they do correlate.

Here are the levels in order:

• Developer Friendly - The ideal stance for a product. This means unlockable bootloader, easy flashes, all the works.

• A Long Journey - The device takes quite a bit of manual work to root, but the benefits are well-worth the trouble, with a nice grassy plain in the future.

• A Tough Nut to Crack - A mad maze of downgrades, exploits, and dangerous assaults on bootloader security. But there will be cake.

• Developer Unfriendly - Utterly locked down. There may be some workarounds, but developers are usually loath to work in an uphill battle.

• Hopeless - There is no hope for this device working ideally anytime in the future. Give up all hope (and buy a new device).

Type

These determine what type of experience and Android skin you will get on first purchase.

• Google Experience - A Google Experience device is the flagship of all Androids of it's specific version, directly supported and updated by Google, developer friendly, and as close to stock AOSP as possible. At least in theory.
• AOSP - Uses a stock Android build from the Android Open Source Project with some modifications.
• HTC Sense - A holdover from Windows Mobile days, Sense's long-running, proven design was a godsend for the unremarkable, "feature-phone" styling of the old Android system. Eventually though, AOSP caught up and surpassed it with ICS.
• Motorola Motoblur - Designed to be closer to AOSP while giving Motorola's own "enhancements", though it is widely considered to be a needless slowdown.
• Samsung Touchwiz - The "nature" based launcher and set of related apps. Previous incarnations were known to take "liberties" from Apple, though they have recently discovered their own style.

Community Health

There's no modding without a developer community, and if you use an obscure phone, it might not be easy to find custom ROMs at all. Choose a well-supported phone for best experience.

• Vibrant - ROMs constantly updated and released, large, worldwide developer community.
• Healthy - The normal health for a phone growing old and people bringing in the newest mods.
• Moderate - Quite a few ports and nice mods, but not much unique about it.
• Small-time - One or two big devs, but little else.
• War Front - Just a few devs fighting the good fight against locked bootloaders and carrier shenanigans. But eventually, many will desert.
• Frontier - A ton of users and devs, few ROMs, but a great big future in front of it.
• Ghost Town - Once was covered with devs, but all good things come to an end. Could contain a few holdouts.
• No Development - There's barely any info about it at all, let alone mods.

Google Experience

Google sometimes makes it's own flagship phones as reference devices for new editions of Androids, though manufacturing and design is subcontracted to other companies. Many of these are important to how Android has become popular, and nearly all of them are at the "Google Experience" stance, directly updated by Google.

They are usually branded as "Nexus" devices.

• Google/LG Nexus 4 - The best and somehow the cheapest Nexus smartphone ever made, at $299.

  • Hardware: High-end in mid-2012 - quad-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, 2 GB RAM
  • Stance: Developer Friendly - Unlocked bootloader, Large developer community
  • Community Health: Frontier
  • Latest Stock Version: 4.2 (Jelly Bean)
  • Ideal Version: 4.2 (Jelly Bean)

• Google/ASUS Nexus 7 - The super cheap, superpowered 7-inch tablet built by ASUS at $200, replacing the dated Motorola XOOM. It was designed to give a pure Android alternative to the Kindle Fire, and it has done so quite well.

  • Hardware: High-end in mid-2012 - quad-core 1.3 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3, 1 GB RAM
  • Stance: Moderate - Unlocked bootloader, Large developer community, dearth of ROMs
  • Community Health: Vibrant
  • Latest Stock Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
  • Ideal Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

• Google/Samsung Galaxy Nexus - The phone that catapulted the Nexus line into the masses for the first time. Largely an unremarkable phone released late in the product cycle, but shipped with the groundbreaking Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and would be the only one with it for some time.

  • Hardware: Mid-Tier in 2012 - dual-core 1 GHz TI OMAP, 1 GB RAM
  • Stance: Developer Friendly - Unlocked bootloader, Large developer community
  • Community Health: Vibrant
  • Latest Stock Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
  • Ideal Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

• Motorola XOOM - Not a Nexus device, but was a reference model for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), a full redesign of Android for tablets, to give Android a cool new look to truly compete with the iPad.

  • Hardware: High-end in 2011
  • Stance: Developer Friendly - Unlocked bootloader
  • Community Health: Healthy
  • Latest Stock Version: 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
  • Ideal Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

• Google/Samsung Nexus S - Google took up the mantle of hardware salesman again with the Nexus S, made by Samsung and based on the Galaxy S series. First with 2.3 (Gingerbread) and NFC technology, and is still eligible for updates today.

  • Hardware: Mid-tier Phone in 2011
  • Stance: Developer Friendly - Unlocked bootloader, Not sold through carriers, large developer community
  • Community Health: Vibrant
  • Latest Stock Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)
  • Ideal Version: 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

• Google/HTC Nexus One - Google's first Nexus phone, designed in cooperation with HTC, designed to bypass carriers and completely change how smartphones worked (it didn't work). Was the first phone with Android 2.1 Eclair, but lack of forward thinking or popularity doomed the grand ol' phone to a fate of lack of updates.

  • Hardware: Flagship Phone in 2010, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, 512MB RAM
  • Stance: Developer Friendly - Unlocked bootloader, Not sold through carriers, large developer community
  • Community Health: Moderate
  • Latest Stock Version: 2.3 (Gingerbread)
  • Ideal Version: 2.3 (Gingerbread)

• Motorola Droid - The first Android phone with Android 2.0, and the one that catapulted Android into popularity over the iPhone juggernaut.

  • Hardware: High end in 2009, 800MHz ARMv6, 256MB RAM
  • Stance: Developer Friendly - Unlocked bootloader, (formerly) large developer community, slowing down though.
  • Community Health: Ghost Town
  • Latest Stock Version: 2.3 (Gingerbread)
  • Ideal Version: 2.3 (Gingerbread)

• T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream - The very first Android phone in existence, made by HTC.

  • Hardware: Low end in 2009, 526MHz ARMv6, 256MB RAM
  • Stance: A Tough Nut to Crack - Downgrades are a mess, rooting is difficult.
  • Community Health: Ghost Town
  • Latest Stock Version: 1.6 (Donut)
  • Ideal Version: 2.2 (Froyo)