Another round of release candidates for CM7 are on their way out.. This version is an update to Android 2.3.3, and also brings a few new features like WiMAX on the EVO (from #TEAMWIN), Notification Profiles, and many bugfixes. We are feature-frozen and in bugfix mode at this point, so please let us know about any issues on our bug tracker.

Get the latest from ROM Manager, or head over to our forums or our mirror network for manual downloads.

Edit:

We could never have imagined such a turnout on RC2.  In less than 24 hours since the release, we have accumulated over 150,000 downloads between the RCs of the officially supported devices.  This blows our mind and makes doing this all the more rewarding.

The first CM7 release candidates are starting to roll out for our supported devices! These are builds that are feature-complete and fairly well tested, but still have some minor tweaking that needs done. You should find them stable for everyday use though!

A lot of work has gone into CM7, particularly in the device compatibility area. CodeAurora Forum and OMAPZoom.org have been a huge help, and all the sneaky coders on the CM team who have figured out the remaining issues. And hats off to T-Mobile for open-sourcing their theme engine! Better documentation on creating themes is forthcoming. You’ll also find some very cool new features like a revamped and customizable lockscreen, a restyled music app, “phone goggles”, gesture support everywhere, etc, etc

CM7 is still a work in progress. Some of your favorite features from CM6 might not be there yet, but this is our first checkpoint release and we’ve still got work to do. We also plan to put a bit more visual polish “out of the box” on it.

You can get the latest builds via ROM Manager as they become available, or head over to our forums for manual downloads. Builds of all types are always available on the TDR mirror network.

Thanks, as always, to everyone for their continued support and contributions.

There’s been some recent talk about unofficial versions of CyanogenMod being created and released on sites like XDA, with large amounts of missing features and broken functionality, and I just wanted to talk about our position on this.

An “official” CyanogenMod version is one that uses our code review system, our source repository, and our mirror network. It should look, act, and feel like CM on any other device, and more importantly, it should follow our release schedules (which is a “when it’s ready” kind of thing, but we do plan our final/RC releases when we feel it’s ready). Most importantly, no major hardware functionality should be broken.

We want to see CM available for every device out there, and our infrastructure (and our developer community) is there for anyone to use. We spend a lot of time making new releases of Android backward-compatible with devices that are not ready for them, and we also spend much time making all of these (sometimes not so pretty) changes co-exist together without breaking other devices. The more eyes on your code, the better it will be.

That said, as much as we’d like it to be, the CMSGS project is not yet an official part of CyanogenMod. There are also a number of other unofficial ports out there which haven’t been submitted to us that we’d love to include. If you’re interested, stop by #cyanogenmod-dev on Freenode. If you didn’t get it from our mirror network or the CM forums, don’t expect it to be up to our standards.

The biggest thing to keep in mind when porting to a new device is to think about how your change is going to affect other devices. This is the biggest reason why we aren’t supporting Samsung devices other than the Nexus S yet. Don’t change hardcoded default values just to suit your device. Use the configuration options available, or add new ones with the original values as defaults. Do a build for another unrelated device after you make your changes (it helps to have another device to test with, of course) and verify it as well. Android was made for this, so do it right.

Like I’ve said so many times before, CyanogenMod is all about the community. And our community can help you too. I’d love to see more of these ports contributed to the project- it’s only going to make things better. We’ve grown from just a mod to what I’d call an “Android distribution” and we need to keep our standards high.

The CM buildbot is back in action and cranking out CM7 builds for all of our supported devices! These builds are unsupported and only for brave testers, but feedback is appreciated on the forums. The current state of CM7 is pretty solid- you should have no problem using these as your daily driver, but always do a a backup before flashing! These are entirely automated and development is moving rapidly right now, so it’s always possible that something could be wildly broken. Our first release candidates aren’t far off.

Nightly builds can be downloaded from the TD Mirror Network and the buildbot status can be checked here.

Tim Bray posted something today on the Android developers blog that everyone running CyanogenMod or any other custom firmware on their mobile device should read.

I’m preaching to the choir here, but he’s right on. We want a reliable connection and friendly service when things go wrong. We don’t want to live in your walled garden and pay $5 extra for services that our PC gets for free. We want to be able to tinker with the awesome pile of electronics that some of us have paid full retail for. We want to *help* you fix bugs and improve security.

We are starting to see some carriers embrace it slowly (guess who?) and others try to fight it with every last breath (guess who?).

My mom doesn’t pay her ISP extra money to connect to an Exchange server from her home PC. What’s so different about my phone that’s actually more powerful than her PC?

Our crew of 10000 monkeys at 10000 typewriters have finally managed to crank out a new stable release. Versions for each device are rolling out now, and are available in the forums or via ROM Manager.

If you haven’t been tracking the release candidates, 6.1 is a major upgrade with tons of new features, support for a few new devices, new languages, and extra awesomesauce added Check out the CHANGELOG for a full list of what you can expect.

Thanks to everyone who’s contributed code, art, support on the forums, wiki pages, and of course donations. This wouldn’t be possible without you.