Custom Desire ROM for Nexus One by MoDaCo Released

Android developer MoDaCo has just released his alpha Desire ROM for the Nexus One. This is an ALPHA ROM, not even BETA, so as MoDaCo has advised, you probably won’t want to make this your main ROM but it’ll give you an idea of what you can look forward to in the future.

From the ROM thread on XDA:

What is it?

As you all know, HTC have announced the ‘HTC Desire’, which is effectively HTC’s version of the Nexus One. It shares a lot of the same hardware, but features cool stuff like HTC Sense and other cool apps (such as a camera app with face recognition, touch focus etc. etc.). The product is due to launch in just under 2 months, which means very early Beta ROMs have started to leak. This Alpha release is one such leak.

Alpha? That sounds scary?

Yeah, this isn’t even Beta. There’s a good chance you won’t want to use this as your main ROM, but you might like to check out what’s coming down the road. Now that this ROM has been ported to the N1 (and is nearly flawless), ports of future leaks will be a lot easier and a lot quicker to release. When the final Desire release eventually arrives, it should run perfectly on our devices without too much additional work.

So what works?

Almost everything – it’s quicker to talk about what doesn’t work. Aside from the FM radio, there appear to be no hardware incompatibilities that will cause a problem between the two devices. Even the noise cancelling microphone is functional in this ROM. The only problems with the ROM are related to the fact it’s early Beta. The biggie here is graphical glitching – you’ll see this as you start using the ROM. This could be a driver issue, related to the now-removed watermarking code or something else, I will continue to investigate now the initial release is out. The camera application does not yet record at 720P and is locked to a max res of 3 Megapixels, but these are indeed all symptoms of an early Beta release, simple as that. You’ll notice occasional oddities such as setting the wallpaper is best done through the settings app rather than the menu key on the homescreen, but on the whole, the system is pretty usable and very cool. Weirdly, Google Maps doesn’t seem to have multitouch in this build, although the browser does. I’d expect this to change before release. Oh, did I mention Flash 10.1 appears to be present?

Tell me about partitions!

The Desire has a different partition layout to the Nexus One, which means some stuff had to be moved from /system to /data. No biggie, and with /system being 98% utilised due to sensibly moving stuff around, it worked out rather well. Be aware that this means you must wipe BEFORE installing the ROM and NOT AFTER, or it won’t boot. A wipe is strongly recommended before trying this ROM – and remember to nandroid backup first!

What else are you working on for the ROM?

I have deliberately left this ROM un-odex’d, as I know other ROM developers will like to have a play with it (remember to credit your source guys!). Going forward, odex’ing the ROM makes a lot of sense to save space, or perhaps moving the dalvik-cache to the cache partition (as in cyanogen’s ROM). I am also as I mentioned before working on resolving the graphical issue, and of course trying to find you newer leaks! I am also looking into moving some of the system partition into squashfs partitions to save yet more space.

What kernel are you using? Any other tweaks worth knowing about?

The ROM has the usual MCR tweaks (tun.ko, openvpn, busybox, dropbear etc.) and is running a custom kernel by teknologist and myself based on Cyanogen’s excellent source. Himem is enabled.

Alright, i’ve read enough, gimme the downloads!

One download, update zip format, apply via Amon_RA’s excellent recovery image, remember to Nandroid backup first. You probably won’t want to use this as your production ROM yet!