One of the nice things about Android is that it's open source, meaning developers can take Google or the phone manufacturer's code, hack it however they want, compile, and install on their phones. And if they're nice, share it with the rest of the world. Depending on the phone, this can range anywhere from simple (the Google Nexus phones) to impossible (any of a number of locked-down phones). The LG T-Mobile G2x falls on the latter side of that, requiring a couple simple tools to get it rooted and ready to install a new OS. Doing so requires wiping everything, but there's, again, tools to back everything up.
From there, it's a matter of finding and installing a custom ROM. The major repository for these is xda-developers.com, a huge forum of hackers working on dozens of phones from every major manufacturer, though more popular phones might have their own sites set up just for them. Naturally, not every ROM is going to be the same, but they generally offer improvements in speed, stability, and battery life over the shipped OS (at the cost of some convenience with updates, as well as voiding the phone's warranty, although in most cases, it's easy enough to return it to a state where it's impossible to tell it's been hacked). I find it kind of hilarious that this is the case, considering these are unpaid hackers doing it for fun, more or less. One or two of the major ROMs might make enough to live on, but that's about it. Most phones have many to choose from, although many of them, but a good number of those start with just one: CyanogenMod. From what I've gathered, the lead developer of the project, hacker-alias Cyanogen started on the original HTC G1 and has been working on the Android OS ever since, across a number of phones, and has recruited a number of other developers to work on phones he doesn't personally own. One such phone is mine, the G2x. It doesn't have a stable release yet, but I've been running the nightly builds since the early teens without many issues, and it continues to get better, currently at #89, though I think once a stable release is out (which might be sooner rather than later, since a release client was released a week or so ago), I'm just going to stop there.
CyanogenMod 7, the current version is based on Android 2.3.4, the most current release from Google. From there, the team makes a number of under-the-hood changes to the OS, as well as adding some rather nice features such as a "powerbar" (toggle switches for various things such as wifi, the LED, and so on) to the notification pull-down, "phone goggles" (set your phone to not let you call or text people after a certain time without solving math problems - yes, this is for those drunk dialers out there), as well as a whole host of new settings to further tweak the system to one's liking. Most importantly, it made my phone seem noticeably faster over stock. They've managed to keep the useful T-Mobile apps like wifi calling and visual voicemail as part of the OS, as well. All in all, it seems like a significant improvement over what was originally on the phone, even if it takes a bit more to manage it (I update maybe once a week, which takes about a half hour total).
Besides CM7, I briefly tried out Eaglesblood, which touts itself as the fastest ROM available. It seemed very snappy, but it had a pretty big issue in that it wouldn't properly mount my SD card when connected to my computer. I may have fixed that when CM7 started doing the same thing, but at this point, I'm not sure I want to bother wiping everything and starting over, even with backups all taken care of. I am, however, looking forward to the upcoming MIUI release for my phone, which looks like it goes in a completely different direction for Android. It looks almost like iOS, which isn't a bad thing in my book. But that doesn't have a set release, so we'll see when it comes around.
On Android, in general, I'm not 100% sure I'm sold yet, and this is multiple months down the line. It's still nowhere near as polished as iOS, and Google seems more intent on adding every feature they can think of than cleaning up what they have. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a very Google way of thinking. I'm curious to see what they do with Ice Cream Sandwich, and I may snag whatever the next Nexus phone is, since that line is the purest Google experience possible. We'll see. I may just go back to an iPhone if for no reason other than that Android phones seem to be getting bigger and bigger, which is exactly not what I want.
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