If you’ve got a rooted Android device, there may be several full ROM builds available for your device. These ROMs are full system builds of Android with various customizations that often go above and beyond the stock Android experience.
ROMs are generally built for one or more specific purposes. Some ROMs (the famous CyanogenMod for example), are built with many extra features and options that go way above and beyond the base Android options. Other ROMs are streamlined for speed, with overclocked kernels and many memory tweaks to optimize the device.
Regardless of the ROM’s purpose, there are only two ways to build a ROM, from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code, or by customizing an existing build of the OS for the device. Read more about them after the break.
The great thing about Android being open source is that anyone can grab the soruce code and build an Android ROM. Many amateur developers have taken advantage of this and built full ROMs from the source. The main benefit of this is that the ROM will have the latest and greatest code from the Android tree. Building from source also gives developers more options for inserting code changes deep into the OS.
The quirk about building from source is that device specific features and tweaks still need to be added. These have to be pulled from the latest device-specific build and added to the ROM. Also, the Google apps (Android Market, GMail, Google Talk, etc.) are not open source, so they have to be pulled from the latest builds and installed separately.
The “tweaked build” ROMs that are available can be put together and released more quickly than AOSP ROMs. Developers take the latest device-specific build and customize it to their liking. These ROMs often have many improvements over the stock builds, but are limited in some of the behind-the-scenes options that AOSP builds can access.
Builds for devices with HTC Sense have to be customized from the device-specific build if they are keeping the Sense UI since it is not open-source. There are source builds for these devices as well, but they do not include Sense.
So which setup is better? In a word, both. Depending on what you’re looking for, you can find very nice versions of both. If you’re just after an improvement over the stock experience, tweaked build ROMs can be a great way to get that experience. If you’re looking for more serious modifications to the OS, AOSP builds (depending on the type) can provide a significantly different experience from the stock build that comes on the phone.
If your rooted Android phone has access to custom ROMs, there are probably AOSP and tweaked build ROMs available for it. If you’re like me, you’ll probably try both versions, and many different variations before settling on a favorite.
I’m currently running Sapphire 1.0 on my Motorola Droid. I’ve found it to be a very stable AOSP ROM, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m running something completely different next week.
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