Welcome to CyanogenMOD CM6 Alpha 1

This is a quick preview of what you can expect from Cyanogen’s CyanogenMOD CM6 Alpha 1.  It’s not a full review but a short introduction and my opinions of how the new release from TeamDouche is coming along.  It’s almost unfair to call this Cyanogen’s anymore as there are so many people involved in the production, testing and maintenance of CyanongeMOD.  Cyanogen has done such an amazing job of creating an Android base that anyone can use.  He’s organized and has a small army of people working with him.  It’s amazing to see how far this has come from the early days of Android.  My hat comes off to Cyanogen in appreciation.

Click here if you’d like to donate to the Cyanogen’s buy him a beer fund!

You can find Release information on Cyanogen AndroidSPIN Developer Homepage

Now down to the ROM.  First I’ll give you my timings from start to finish for installing CM6 on my Nexus One and then a quick rundown of what to expect.

Installation and Boot Times
Before installing CyanogenMOD CM6 Alpha 1 it’s recommended that you fully wipe everything from your phone first.

Flash ROM: 1.02 min
Flash GAPPS: 0.19 min
- Reboot -
Boot Animation: 0.51 mins
Sign In Screen: 1:12 mins

So all in all, it’s really quick to flash and setup. I had read some reports in the forums about people getting stuck in a boot loop, but I’m guessing they didn’t have everything prepared correctly.

What’s inside?

* FYI: I have reduced all the screens down to a more reasonable size for this preview so some things may look a little distorted.  You can view all the full size screen shots here.

And don’t forget to read all the way to the bottom for a sneak peak video of the new boot animation. Thanks to Mike for doing this .

CM6 Alpha 1 has the latest version of the ADW Launcher as the default home application. The usual 5 page page default home screen layout as any other ADW Launcher install.

A quick press of the menu button brings no surprises, except for the lack of any ADW Launcher settings.  The ADW Settings can be found in the main settings menu.

Selecting Settings brings up the regular settings menu with a couple of additions, ADWLauncher and the new CyanogenMOD settings.

The CyanogenMOD settings is a new area that will be expanded as CM6 gets further developed and currently only contains the Trackball Settings and Br0tip Settings.  This is pretty cool and will act as the spare parts area for future CyanogenMOD releases.

Selecting About phone reveals information about your phone and of course the Kernel version, Mod version and Build number.  Glad to see FRF85B here, but it will be even nicer once we see FRF91 or whatever tiny update Google decides to release next.

Pressing the applications icon from the Home screen reveals the default applications installed with CM6, with the addition of the Google Apps installed separately.

I fired up the Android Market just to make sure everything was working as expected and I can confirm it is. Like I expected it not to.  Google Maps was also working like a charm.

After downloading the latest Flash Player from the Market, I headed out for some browsing.  First stop was AndroidSPIN and then over to flash.com.

And finally, it’s time to see how fast this bad boy can perform.  Nothing has been done to this ROM from the default settings, but I understand that the CPU can be overclocked using SetCPU.

And last but not least, here’s a quick preview of the new boot animation you can add from the CyanogenMOD forums.

A huge thanks to everyone involved in the creation of CyanogenMOD CM6.  We can’t wait to see CM6 as it gets released on plenty of other devices.