It is not that we don’t like the firmware OEMs ship with their phones. There are some really well-designed stock firmware that we like, and others that are just bloated, memory hogging, and seriously, slow. For all those and other reasons like privacy, we have people moving on to custom ROMs which help us get rid of those annoyances we face with stock firmware.
Some OEMs that are taking steps forward in this direction are Sony, which provide developers with all the resources they need to build AOSP ROMs from scratch, or other OEMs like Motorola, which make minimal changes to their firmware which quite closely resembles AOSP, and is quite close to the firmware we find on any Google device, something unlike Samsung, who are just about ready to replace every Google app with their own custom versions.
Oppo, the OEM that has not violated GPL yet, by completely providing their kernel sources, something similar to Sony and Xiaomi, has started their new Project Spectrum for the Find 7, a custom ROM based on AOSP 5.1.1, which brings the full features of stock Android along with popular features of their own stock firmware, ColorOS (not something that everyone is necessarily happy with).
Currently, the features included from ColorOS are:
- Screen-off gestures: Double tap to Wake, and a Circle gesture for custom actions like opening a camera.
- ColorOS Camera: With the ColorOS camera, you can have the plugins provided by Oppo like Beautify, Filters, HDR, GIF, Double exposure and Expert Mode.
- MaxxAudio: Something like Beats Audio that HTC provides with their Sense ROM.
It should be noted that Oppo has their own forums, quite similar to XDA Developers, (a step that was also followed by Yu), where they have elaborate instructions about the release, and installation.
For More info visit the Thread on Oppo Forums
It should be noted that the stock firmware provided by Oppo is limited to 4.3 Jellybean, on the Find 7. However, developers have provided updates till Android 6.0 with the help of custom ROMs. It is not the first time an OEM has provided AOSP (or AOSP-like) builds, but, the more, the better!
