CyanogenMod 9 released for the Motorola Xoom

Highly Functional CM9 Kang released for the Motorola Xoom



Here we have it folks!  This is something my daughter, Alyssa will be VERY excited about.  She got a Motorola Xoom for graduation last year and every time her and I are talking ROMS and her Xoom she always asks me if CyanogenMod is available for her Xoom.  She would have settled for CM7 (keep your Gingerbread flames to yourself :)....  she's a CyanogenMod fan, just like Dad).

The XDA Developers that never sleep have brilliantly pulled together a CM9 ROM (Kang), that is as smooth as silk.  There is only one function they don't have working yet, which is fine with me because of this mug my parents have dealt me.  That is the facial unlocking feature.  I was never a real fan of this feature since watching the official release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus live on YouTube.  So.....  if this feature never gets built in I'm fine with that, although I know a lot of people are looking forward to it. 

Now lets get to where and how you can get this ROM on your shiny Motorola Xoom.

Head on over to Team Rogues thread and be sure to hit that little thanks  button and more importantly hit that dontate button and buy them a red Bull to keep them ROM's coming.

Includes:
+Source from CyanogenMod 9 (1/9/11)
+Full support for Camera, HDMI and Video acceleration (from the leaked 4.0.3 ROM)
+Rogue XM Kernel 2.0.1
+Disabled lockscreen rotation
+Allow apps to write to SD card (thanks kcrudup)
+Tweaked ICS boot animation (thanks Sardo Numspa)
Known issues:
-Face unlock does not work

Here's the XDA thread for CM9

Well, have at it ladies and gents!  I'm off to find my daughter's Xoom!

MIUI on your phone with out flashing a thing (well kind off)

Theme your phone with MIUI with out rooting, flashing or any of that scary stuff with 2 simple apps.


We recieved an email from someone yesterday asking if there was any way to get MIUI on their phone with out rooting or flashing anything.  The answer is NO but.....  you can get it to look pretty darn close to MIUI with a launcher and a widget.  There are other apps you can pile on to make it look alot more like MIUI but these 2 are a good starting ground.
Here are some screen shots from my Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G (mouthful there) using the MIUI.ADW.Launcher app and the MIUIDark Digital Weather widget from the Android Market.  No rooting or hacking nessesary and if you find you don't like the whole IOS feel you can uninstall them and go back to your stock look.  These apps work with pretty much any Android phone or tablet.

As you can see the home screen and app drawer have an iPhone look to them.  This is not everyone's cup of tea but the emailer is one of many that want to have the MIUI look and feel on their phone with out doing a little hackery.

Just a quick lesson on launchers on your phone and from the market.  If you have an HTC phone it comes with a "Sense" UI and launcher, Samsung generally has "Touch Wiz", Motorolla has "Moto Blur" and so on.  When you install a custom launcher from the market like this MIUI ADW Launcher it just pretty much covers the launcher that comes stock on your phone and gives it a whole new feel and look.  Motorolla users generally don't like Moto blur so they will put another launcher over it with Launcher Pro or like the launcher I'm writing about here.  It's all preference!  Also in a lot of cases a launcher can actually make your phone smoother.  The head writer over at our sister site Root Your Droid's main phone is a Motorolla Droid X2 and he feels that Launcher Pro makes his whole experience with that particular phone snappier and more customizable.  My main phone is the Samsung Galaxy S 2 and I personally can't stand Touch Wiz so I use a launcher by the name of ADW EX (I'll be doing a write up on both).

There's also a lot of different customizations you can do with this launcher, screen preferences, drawer settings, general behavior, UI settings and a whole bunch more.

The weather clock that is in the screen shot of my home page is a widget  from the market called MIUI Dark Digital Weather Clock (and it's free).  This widget IMo just gives it that final touch to give it a more of a MIUI ROM experience.

There you have it folks!  You can enjoy MIUI on your phone with out voiding your warranty by rooting or flashing anything.

One last thing before you go and grab this launcher.  When you first start the launcher it doesn't have an app drawer button (ala iPhone).  Just long press your home screen and press "Launcher Actions" then press "Open/Close App Drawer".  You can drag and drop it in your launcher bar and change it to any icon you want (long press the app drawer icon and edit it).

Thanks for the email!  I hope I answered your question :)

Links for these apps
MIUI ADW Launcher
MIUI Dark Digital Weather Clock widget