I booted up my phone from my flashaholic days. Custom ROMs back then had so much personality.

I booted up my Samsung from Froyo/GB era, and I must say, I kinda miss the "spirit" and novelty the custom ROM scene brought back then.

It was arguably the golden age of custom ROMs, since AOSP gingerbread had shit functionality, UI and UX. I mean, stock AOSP didn't even have swipe to dismiss notifications, or music playback controls on the notification shade, or the option to reboot when the power button is held. I don't even recall if rotation animation existed back then, I think that it only came with Cyanogenmod. Furthermore, installing a custom ROM was pretty much mandatory for low-end devices (such as my shitty 800Mhz 290MB ram pos) to gain any semblance of speed and stability.

It was also at this time when manufacturers such as Sony, HTC, Samsung etc. provided their own skin which pretty much set them apart from each other. Each skin had their distinct design languages that carried the vision the manufacturers had for their lineup.

Sony's timescape UI was very sleek and futuristic.

HTC sense had a utilitarian feel.

Samsung's Touchwiz was infamous for being the bloated mess it was, but was subjectively the most user friendly.

MIUI's level of customization and theming which was on a whole 'nother level. (Back then, Xiaomi didn't sell phones yet), and many more.

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Sure enough there was demand and developers from XDA ported ROMs from other devices. Not only did developers simply port ROMs, there were also those who cooked their own ROMs and meticulously themed every app and every part of the UI as they pleased. Looking back, those were the designs that had red glossy icons, matching boxy fonts that screamed edgy, had no thought for readability or user-friendliness, and were tacky as fuck (Look up "CM7 Theme chooser themes" on google or XDA), but it is undeniable that even those carried their own personality.

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Nowadays, Custom ROMs mostly seems to be a derivative of "pixel experience" that are all boring and indistinguishable from each other. Custom ROMs back then were really "custom", and had their own quirks and personality. Also, not trying to discredit developers, but developers from the past tinkered more and were more creative and resourceful, where they wrote entire frameworks for new features and animations. Heck, there's even an iOS ripoff (see album at bottom of post), and it's not just a simple hack job of slap-a-launcher-and-theme-then-call-it-a-day, as each app was built individually and integrates with other system apps.

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As a reward for the long read, here is my fully riced Samsung from back then (Pls Dont Crucify Me)

Also pls bring back CRT screen off animation.

Submitted May 29, 2019 at 10:47AM by ateliersoma http://bit.ly/2Mfqnna https://ift.tt/eA8V8J