The hacking community is constantly engaged in pushing hardware farther than it can go. The latest example of their efforts is a “working port of Google’s latest Android 4 “Ice Cream SandwichOS to the Samsung Galaxy Wave S8500.
This project clearly shows the strength of community in that this port possible thanks to the effort of many. While this project was undertaken by one person, but built on the effort of many hackers, the developer got funded for purchasing his Wave device through donations from others.
Currently the only the Samsung Wave S8500 is supported by this custom Android ROM, however the developer’s secondary target is to port it to the Wave II S8530 as well. Both these phones have been around for quite a while now, and are available at quite a good price considering their specifications.
The Samsung Wave S8500 was the first phone to feature Samsung’s own Bada operating system, but still has decent specifications (3.3” 480×800 screen, 5MP camera with 720p video recording support, 1 GHz Cortex-A8 processor). The only issue was that the phone runs Samsung bada, the uncertainty surrounding the future of that OS means that bada devices aren’t as popular as they might be based on hardware specs and price.
This gives Wave-owners a fresh breath of hope for their bada-devices by giving them the possibility of using an alternate OS.
You can find out more about the ROM, how to download it, how to install it, what works and what doesn’t at the developer’s website.
