Bugless Beast 4.1.X Jelly Bean

Bugless Beast Jelly Bean builds are now available for select devices and coming to more soon! The builds are based on the latest source with slight modification as I see fit. Rather than write a long post about the builds, I will use this article as a live changelog and provide the download links. As a side note, be sure to flash the latest radio and bootloader available on my downloads page.

Download:

• Toro (VZW Galaxy Nexus)
• Maguro (GSM Galaxy Nexus)
• Grouper (Nexus 7)

Developers:

• repo init -u git://github.com/peteralfonso/platform_manifest.git -b jb

Changelog after the jump

Motorola Xoom 4G Upgrade Info

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you already know that I have started building ROMs for the Motorola Xoom. I will be discussing these builds and others in a post soon. Today I'd like to remind the Verizon Xoom owners about the free 4G upgrade that is available and hopefully clear up some confusion in the process.

Earlier this month, Verizon sent out a reminder email stating "Last Chance For A Free 4G Upgrade". It went on to say that time is indeed running out and that if you act now, they will throw in a free dock. Regardless of these incentives, let's go over the reasons why you need to send your device in.

Google recently announced that the Motorola Xoom is fully supported "out of the box" by AOSP. In other words, custom ROMs from source can be built for it, as with Nexus devices. Unfortunately, only the 4G Verizon Xoom and Wi-Fi Xoom is supported. The 3G Xooms that have yet to be upgraded, will not be able to utilize the buffet of ROMs that are soon to come.

Even if your Xoom is not currently active (does not have a data plan), you can still send it in for the upgrade! My Xoom has not been active for nearly 8 months, even during the time I sent it in for the upgrade. Some of you may have purchased your Verizon Xoom used and may not be an actual Verizon customer, your device can still be upgraded for free as well. The upgrade process is done via Motorola, not Verizon.

It's only natural for us to want bigger and better things. At some point you may want to sell your Verizon Xoom to purchase a newer tablet. Resale value will be much lower on a non-upgraded 3G Xoom, especially once the upgrade window closes. So do your wallet a favor and send it in asap.

The entire upgrade process is quite easy. For starters, head over to the upgrade form on Motorola's website. Once completed, you will receive a package with instructions on how to send it in. Remember, this entire process is free, all the shipping is paid for in advance. Once shipped, the process only takes a few days. By the end of the week you can be running my ROM!

Update: If your Verizon Xoom currently is rooted or is running a custom ROM, I would advise flashing it back to its factory state before sending it in for the upgrade. To do so, download the latest "Software Images" from my downloads page and flash each using fastboot and relock the bootloader.

Screen shot of the email after the break.

Custom IceCreamSandwich Emulator Build

A few times a week you can catch me scouring the Android related threads on Google Groups. I find it to be a great way to learn a few tips and tricks. Throughout the past weeks I have seen the same questions arise time after time. How do I create a custom emulator image? How do I put the Market on the emulator? Since these questions were asked so much, and I had never used the emulator before, I decided to give it a shot. As you can see in the screen shot, the end result left me with an emulator that was rooted and had all the G-Apps (including Market). 

To build this emulator you will need to sync my source and choose "pete_emulator-eng" in the lunch menu. More information on how to get my source and what changes I made to create this emulator can be found on my GitHub. I should also mention that this emulator image has the same developer apps that come with the sdk image. I decided to leave these apps because they can be useful tools for developers creating their own apps.

Since we are on the subject of emulators, check out the amazing skins by Heiko Behrens!

Download: Motorola Droid Update (Official) FRK76

When the community heard news that Motorola would be pushing yet another update to the OG Motorola Droid, minds began to race, would they really officially update to Gingerbread!? About a week and a half later, we we disappointed to hear that this update would only bring a few "security patches" to the device. After diffing the previous official build to the new FRK76 build, no proprietaries had been modified. So what does this mean to you, as a rooted user running the latest version of Bugless Beast? Absolutely nothing, Gingerbread is most likely more secure than Froyo will ever be so there is no reason to downgrade. This news is just as disappointing to developers because it means nothing new can be pulled from this update to be used in a source build. In my opinion, this small 761 KB patch of an update is simply a way of Motorola saying "Hey you OG Droid user, please don't use your upgrade on a Galaxy Nexus". Interestingly enough, Motorola even decided to call this update "Android 2.2.3", which I do not believe even officially exist at AOSP.

None the less, thanks to a few naughty Motorola Feedback Network testers, you can find the OTA update as well as a full stock, rooted ROM of FRK76 at my download page before it is officially available to all.

Official support thread can be found at RootzWiki to discuss.

UPDATE: Android 2.2.3 does exist, it was just pushed to AOSP. More info here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-building/MuwZk1iY_Sk

Download: Stock Fastboot Images For Galaxy Nexus

When hacking a device, one of the first things to consider is how it can be flashed back to stock in case something bad may happen, such as a brick. This consideration is just as important to users as it is to developers. Unfortunately, official stock images are rarely ever released due to licensing and other various reasons. Sometimes the community is lucky enough to get a "leak" of these images which is even more rare. Because of this I have taken it upon myself to make my own factory images from source. These images can be flashed via fastboot either by the "update" command or by flashing each .img individually.

I put in quite a bit of work to make these images match exactly what shipped on the retail Galaxy Nexus (Maguro). The build.prop is identical, the boot.img is secure, no applications or files are missing, etc. This is as close to the real deal as it gets. Once again I will mention, so I do not get a C&D from Samsung, I made these myself, they are not a leak of official files. When the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus (Toro) becomes available, and its associated source is released, I will make images for it as well. 

As stated earlier, quite a bit of work went into making these. If you would like to post these on other websites or forums please link to this post, and only use my bit.ly download links so I can keep track of the statistics. If these ever save you from the nightmare of sending your device back to Samsung for flashing or replacement; a donation, thank you comment, or a Like, would be a sure way of showing your appreciation.

Official support for these images can be found at RootzWiki where I have created a thread to discuss.

The download link for these images as well as other files such as stock ROMs can be found at: download.peteralfonso.com/maguro (you can +1 this page to share with friends!)