As much as I love the T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant, I’d love it that much more if there was a stock (no custom UI) Android ROM available for it. Well to my surprise, it turns out that there is, sort of. One of the awesome Android developers, Eugene373, has cooked up a vanilla Android ROM for the Vibrant and it’s available right now, albeit with bugs.
Before you go flashing your brains out with this thing, know that there are many bugs that need to be addressed, and that may take a while. We can’t expect the guy to dedicate his life to this, but it looks like a lot of progress has been made. The ROM looks super fast, something you don’t see all the time with the Vibrant. A couple big problems with this ROM is that it doesn’t have a working data connection at the moment, and the camera is still not working. These issues will be taken care of in due time, but that day is not today. Still, I’m just glad to see some vanilla Android on this thing.
The ROM isn’t Android 2.2 (Froyo) , but 2.1 (Eclair), which is fine since we should be expecting 2.2 at some point soon. Right now, I’ll take anything that doesn’t take ten minutes to complete a search, which is what I’ve been seeing from the Vibrant review unit I’m carrying at the moment. To be fair, though, there’s something wrong with my review unit.
It’s uncertain when we’ll be seeing an update for the ROM, but we’re sure that Eugene and other developers are on their way to making a very functional, and fast vanilla Android ROM. While we shouldn’t go rushing over and bombarding the dev on Twitter, a little haste may help, since CM6 development for the Vibrant should be in full swing.
If you’re craving some stock Android, you may have some time to kill, but you can rest easy knowing that it’s coming. If you’re waiting for some real stock Android, you may want to wait until next month before purchasing a new phone, as the T-Mobile G2 should be on its way shortly. Still, a big thanks to Eugene and everyone contributing to this.
Check out the video below to see just how snappy the ROM is on the Vibrant!
[Via: XDA-Developers]