The Nexus 7 developer community has taken to Google's new tablet like flies to honey as a number of exciting developments have transpired for those that will want to customize their tablet experience after receiving their new devices. We already told you last week about the Nexus 7 gaining root access, well now we have our first custom ROM by the SoCal Devs Team over on XDA-Developers Forum. The custom ROM is a 'fast and light' version that makes the UI snappier, removes some of the superfluous software installed by Google on the device and gives you some tools to better access the device.
In further developer news the Nexus 7 also has its first 'custom kernel' as well which among other things let's you overclock your Nexus 7 to 1.5 GHz. Finally for the real developers out there looking to dive into the Nexus 7's code to do their own experiments on the device XDA Elite Developer AdamOutler has created a 'hack pack' for the Nexus 7 which contains various binaries and reference materials to help other developers create complex modifications and packages for the Nexus 7. This is great for all your new Android developers looking to make the Nexus 7 your developer device.
Now I've included links below to each of these developments but I should caution that for the average consumer...while you might want to look to satisfy your curiosity and learn more about your Nexus 7 device and the kind of developer support that will only grow on this pure 'Nexus' product, we are not encouraging anyone at this time to root their device. Those that do so do it at their own peril!(and it could void your warranty) Of course if you're an experienced hacker or Android geek who has rooted before you know that as long as you follow instructions the chance of 'bricking' your device is small, still, we want to caution the inexperienced so that they don't jump in without doing their homework first.
All in all though, the fact there is so much effort and progress being made in the developer community for the Nexus 7 is great news for us regular tablet users. Why you ask? Because it is these developers that will eventually create workarounds, improvements and even new features for our tablets that will greatly add to its usefulness to us. If a way to get video out, add memory to our device via USB(actually, this one has already been done) or other 'fixes' to Nexus 7 limitations are found...it will be because of these guys. And we can expect all kinds of custom ROMs in the future that will keep our Nexus 7 tablets perpetually cutting edge as well.
So are you a Nexus 7 developer or perhaps Android aficionado that plans to experiment and put a custom ROM on their device? What do you think of these developments? Excited that the developer community is taking such a keen interest in the Nexus 7? What would you like to see them develop?
Source:
XDA-Developers
