Now that I’ve built a few ROMs for the XA2 Ultra (AOKP and Resurrection Remix), I’ve turned my attention to the Sony Open Devices Project. The SODP, as it is abbreviated, is an effort to make custom ROMs for various Sony devices that are as open source as possible. This includes reducing the amount of vendor blobs (binary large objects) by replacing them with open source code wherever possible.

While the phones in this program are not 100% vendor blob free, they are dramatically reduced and continue progressing as time goes on and developers continue their work. It’s a great idea with several volunteer and professional staff members (courtesy of Sony), and I am all for it. Here is their statement from their web page linked above:

For some of the Xperia™ devices, we provide Android™ Open Source Project (AOSP) device configurations on GitHub. This means that the software will be open for you as a developer to use and contribute to. This is a way for us to support the open Android community, and it is also a tool for us to facilitate and verify contributions to AOSP.

That said, I’ve started progressing in that direction. I’m not skilled enough to do the helpful work of breaking down blobs and coding an open source alternative, but I’m jumping in by using their material as a base for my ROMs that I build.

One of the greatest advantages I see in using this material is the newer kernels. The XA2 Ultra comes with kernel version 4.4. However, the SODP includes kernels 4.9 and 4.14! Using a newer kernel brings better performance and enhanced security, which is always a plus!

It will be interesting to see what comes of this, how functional the ROMs are, and where I can go from here….

Linux – Keep it simple.

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