CyanogenMod shelves ICS/Jelly Bean support for Snapdragon S1 devices

By Alex Dobie
last updated

The CyanogenMod team has announced that it won't be able to officially support phones powered by first-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon chips in version 9 or 10 of its popular custom firmware. The CM team broke the news on Google+, where it revealed that a combination of hardware limitations and concerns for user experience quality were behind the decision. This means many older Android handsets that shipped in Q1 and Q2 2010, such as HTC's Nexus One, Desire and EVO 4G, will not see official CyanogenMod 9 or 10 builds, and will have to look elsewhere for their ICS or Jelly Bean fix. All affected devices will continue to be supported on the Gingerbread-based CyanogenMod 7.x branch, the team says.

Explaining the technical issues behind the decision, CM highlighted the good old Nexus One. In order to run CM9 or 10, the phone's internal memory would need to be repartitioned, and even then the lack of certain proprietary code for the phone's SoC (system-on-a-chip) would've made for a janky user experience -- "the pieces just aren't there." The team notes that it wouldn't be impossible to get ICS or Jelly Bean running on this hardware, but that doing so could break third-party application support because of the hackiness of the code involved.

If you still want Android 4.x on your Nexus One, you'll certainly be able to do so on other custom ROMs (and unofficial CM builds), though you'll sacrifice stability in order to do this. It's unfortunate, but when you remember that most of these phones shipped more than two years ago on Android 2.1 or earlier, it's not all that surprising.

We've got the full list of affected devices after the break.

Source: +CyanogenMod

Affected devices: ZTE Blade, HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire, LG Optimus Pro, HTC Tattoo, Samsung Galaxy Ace, HTC Droid Eris, LG Optimus Hub, LG Optimus Chic, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, myTouch 3G Slide, HTC Hero, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC Legend, HTC Aria, Motorola Cliq, Motorola Backflip, Geeksphone One, LG Optimus One, Nexus One, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini, Samsung Galaxy Fit, HTC EVO 4G, Samsung Galaxy Mini, Huawei U8150, Huawei U8220, Commtiva Z71, Geeksphone Zero.

Alex Dobie
Alex Dobie
Executive Editor

Alex was with Android Central for over a decade, producing written and video content for the site, and served as global Executive Editor from 2016 to 2022.

31 Comments
  • The list of devices has the original EVO 4G as the HTC EVO 4G LTE... this might cause confusion for some readers.
  • Fixed. Good catch :)
  • Haha CM said just like HTC, I eally mean this. Btw my HTC Aria works great with CM7.2. I don't need CM9 or 10 if it slowdown my phone
  • The Cyanogenmod guys have some credibility and they explained the technical limitation. When HTC/Samsung/moto say that, half the time its just to encourage people to buy another device and a custom rom like Cyanogenmod works perfectly a couple weeks later. Samsung is the worst offender. Look at the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy Tab 2. Same thing in a slightly different shape and we're still waiting on an official ICS build for the Tab 10.1 while some of us have been using ICS ROMs for months now.
  • "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
    -- Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi --
  • Didn't Yoda say that?
  • That line was from A New Hope. Yoda wasn't introduced until Empire Strikes Back. I type this as my gf yells nerd alert in the background.
  • Sorry the darkside made me double post.
  • You are correct on the quote, and I am a NERD - for a long, long time now. Ah but Yoda was in the 1st and every episode of Star Wars, remember when the Sith Lord confronted Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan? "Yoda: Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.
    Mace Windu: But which was destroyed, the master or the apprentice?" Another appropriate quote might be "WHAT? Me worry?"
  • 1st: People who call themselves nerds tend not to be.
    2nd: Yoda was not in a New Hope, any self respecting Star Wars fan knows this. I actually felt the need to reply to a 6 months old post to correct you, that's how much it annoyed me.
  • Installed a 4.0.4 ROM on an Optimus One over the weekend, runs fine considering it's an old device that was pretty much entry-level when it came out almost 2years ago
  • They warned us about this when the ICS source code dropped. They said that if Google dropped support for the N1, they would too. And look at that!
  • My Droid Incredible cried a little
  • No worries. I'm running AOKP on mine and it's stable.
  • Too bad AOKP dropped them after M6
  • Don't know what they're talking about. I'm using an port of cm9 on my Dinc for the last two months and it has been working perfectly.
  • Hmmm. I was running cm9 on my dinc for a while until I switched to Jelly bean. Cm9 was flawless and it runs jb just fine. Can't kill the og dinc!
  • Cue the humblebrags from people running ICS on their Snapdragon S1 devices since November and Jelly Bean since it was AOSPed... On a related note, I've been running TexasIce's ICS on my Nexus One since December and stuck his Jelly Bean ROM on it just this week. I'm convinced that if you can figure out the BlackRose Hboot process, you can do anything.
  • Calm down everyone. These are just OFFICIAL releases of CyanogenMod. There will still be ports & other developers will continue to work on these devices. CyanogenMod just has very high standards & they don't want to put their name on something that doesn't meet their expectations. You have to move on eventually. Plus, it's not like people with any of these phones haven't or couldn't upgrade if they wanted.
  • Miss my N1...It was my first android device and still my favorite. I wish HTC would make a N1 throwback with current gen specs. The One S was almost that but no trackball :(
  • running jellybean on my captivate its flawless !!
  • Ok htc desire is it a different chip set with the xdesire hd??0.0 ik its running the scorpoin chip but is this y I haven't seen a cm9 for my inspire (desire hd)
  • That's an S2 chip
  • I can understand that decision. I've been eyeing ics and jb builds for my OG EVO4G and would not run one due to it lacking certain features. Now as soon as the cameras and wimax get figured out ill be all over it.
  • As a webOS and Android fan , I understand the news .__. Its disappointing
  • I can agree with it. The ICS builds for EVO 4G just weren't as quick and good as GB releases. I'd say RAM had a bigger part to play than the processor, though. If they had 1GB it might have been a different story.
  • Okay people, I just have to say this. If your phone is over two years old you shouldn't expect support from official sources on your hardware. CM has become an official source for modded Android. If you want or need official support, keep an up to date handset. Something that is still within the two year release window.
  • "If you want or need official support, keep an up to date handset. Something that is still within the two year release window." Now see, that's not exactly a good argument there. Do you realize that a lot of the phones on that list were only 1-1 1/2 years old when ICS was released?
  • That and the fact that the main reason why devices such as the Nexus 1 and Desire are not going to be supported is due to the lack of reasonable internal storage. Not so much because of the processor. After turning on a new Desire from US Cellular, you were blessed with an entire 133MB for apps. The best I was able to get it up to was less than 350MB. I do not remember the exact amount. The Nexus 1 is basically the same phone but with a trackball. I agree with an above poster that mentioned releasing the same design with some updated specs. I loved the simple design that felt like a solid build.
  • I can see where it would be unreasonable to expect the latest OS on my Nexus One forever. 2 years it a little short, but hey. Still, Google's shooting themselves in the foot. They should've put out a 2.4 Gingerbread+ release that made it possible to run ICS-targeted *apps* on the N1 and similar phones. Android tablets are facing multiple headwinds, but the worst one is that so few apps target them specifically. And the reason for that is that so few Android devices (i.e. phones) can run those apps. Chicken and egg and all. And maybe the Nexus 7 will get the apps going. But so far the majority of Android devices are gingerbread phones. And while I'm at it, if they can't easily graft on multi-user support to ICS, that means Android tablets are going to be behind Windows 8 tablets on an important tablet feature. Not such a big deal at first, but if it takes an Android 5 to get multi-user support, and if today's Android 2, 3 and 4 devices can't run the multi-user apps for a year or more, that's gonna be a big problem.
  • I've heard that Google has been working on a multi-user android OS. Whether it will be in a future Jelly Bean version or the next only time will tell. But they are working on it!