Database Users

Have you thanked a dev today?

Part of what makes android great is its openness. I have, and absolutely hated, an HTC Hero. CM6 and all the kernals out there (and swype) changed that. It's still a laggy pile, but I have a feeling if I went back to the stock rom I'd be shocked at how bad it is.
Anyway, to get to the point, my friend got an intercept from virgin mobile, and I found out my brother has a moment. I was looking into custom Roms and whatnot for them to speed up their phones, assuming that with all the projects going on, they had something like we do.
As far as I can tell, they don't. Granted I've invested some time in the hero, so the "where do I even start" factor isn't nearly as high, but both the moment and instinct appeared to be in complete dissarray. There are 200 updates for the stock eclair rom and 200 roms based off of all of them. It seemed like no matter what rom you ran there was some "well this is faster, but the video camera doesn't work", style trade offs. As far as I could tell they've got about as much of a CM6 port, the only attempt at froyo I could see, running on the moment as ASOP had running on his heroc gingerbread build about 6 hours after the SDK hit.
So, I don't know if we got lucky that the smart/right guys got a hero as their phone, or if samsung phones are a tougher nut to crack, or what, but we really have it good over here. Even this forum itself is better and easier than the alternatives.
So, long story short, thanks for all the hard work boys and girls.
Edit: And it's quite possible, probable even, I'm wrong and there are tons of Froyo fully functioning roms for the moment, but the point still remains that there's so much crap out there that you know know what's what.

I could not agree more. I have read a lot here in the Hero community (hence my low post count, I wanted to learn, not have my hand held) Then I started exploring XDA, especially from my phone. It's amazing how much talent there is in the Hero forums, even compared to newer, better phones.

Echoing Fer's comment, XDA forums were a huge part of the reason that I got an Android phone vs. becoming an IPhone devotee. Constant improvements have been wonderful.
I know that I am NOT the reason that you, the developers, do what you do. But please accept my thanks for your irresistible urge to examine and improve.
Arnold

If you listen real close, you can hear the crickets in here.

In case people havent noticed, real development around here has slowed to a crawl. With the GalaxyS 4G now selling and TMO ending the sale of the vibrant, we have slipped onto the backburner. This is what is great about cyanogenmod also. As long as we get on the supported devices list, we will always get updates that we can build.
I am also pretty sure the sheer annoyance of the vibrant forums has made quite a few want to leave the platform, for that reason alone. I almost sold mine for that reason, go read the G1 forums, they already have honeycomb, and it is because they are working together, not complaining about release of something new. They just dont realize that they are new themes, not features.

d33dvb said:
In case people havent noticed, real development around here has slowed to a crawl. With the GalaxyS 4G now selling and TMO ending the sale of the vibrant, we have slipped onto the backburner. This is what is great about cyanogenmod also. As long as we get on the supported devices list, we will always get updates that we can build.
I am also pretty sure the sheer annoyance of the vibrant forums has made quite a few want to leave the platform, for that reason alone. I almost sold mine for that reason, go read the G1 forums, they already have honeycomb, and it is because they are working together, not complaining about release of something new. They just dont realize that they are new themes, not features.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ehh I have to disagree, I think were doing way better than what we were, Yeah the other devs that left were great, but we still have some good devs around, I think will be fine for the time being, Atleast until the sgs2 comes out.

We've got are the same great roms we always had as before, which have been improved, a bunch of new 2.2.1 roms, made possible by Eugene before he left, and 2 Gingerbread betas.
I think the plateau development has hit is due to the lack of Gingerbread source. The only keck was for i9000, iirc. Froyo roms are perfect as they are. More great leaps will come in due time.

One Gingerbread leak. JUST ONE GINGERBREAD LEAK.
You will see development increase by 300%+

Longcat14 said:
One Gingerbread leak. JUST ONE GINGERBREAD LEAK.
You will see development increase by 300%+
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly! 1 tiny little leak will change the game! Dude imagine if it was a tiny leak of honey comb, that would be the biggest game changer on earth lol
Only one can dream.

What do you want your phone to do that development hasn't already provided?
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA Premium App

WTH are you talking about? I keep seeing posts about development stopping but I set half a dozen roms from 2.2, 2.2.1 available and 2.3 ports with MIUI, CM7, and Whitehawx. 5 new kernels in the last few weeks. Do people have short memory or something? In the so call hay days I remember 2 roms from TW, one from Master, and one from Eugene and you have to sit there and wait till Krylon finds a new leak before anything happens.

I agree. I am not sure what kind of OCD phone flashing desire some people are experiencing. How many ROM flavors can you possibly need. We already have a handful of great developers hacking their way through the current limited software available from various Samsung leaks. Realistically I am happy we have any custom ROMs at all, since the Vibrant specifically is a very small subset of the larger Galaxy S family. Expecting to see the number of options such as those for the Nexus One a while back is simply not realistic.
Sent from my SGH-T959

I feel like the Vibrant roms for Froyo are almost as good as it's going to get. We've lost some great devs to drama but i think overall we're doing great. Things are going to get hot again when gingerbread drops.

Time to let go????

I have had my slide for a very long time now. I feel like development is coming to a crawl. CM7 will never have flash integration even though we keep getting upgraded versions of android. The CM7 forum is floaded with issues the last time I peeked. Gotta love those guys for giving us hope and their time. The Alpharev 2 looks super promising kinda wish chiefreloadz and other dev's would take a peek at it to give us life. I am at a point where getting a new phone is inevitable. Wish I could setup a poll via my slide to see how many people feel the same way. How many of you feel the same or disagree with me.
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA App

I feel the same way too. The slide really is a powerful device. I'm really upset it died so quickly.

Yeaaa and I'm especially dissapointed w/ the lack of custom kernels. I see so many devices w/ a wide variety of custom kernels (new and old phones), but this one only has 2 (dumfuq and miguel). I root other peoples phones and do overclocking and such, and I c all these kernels to choose from, while this device only has 2 kernels, even lower end devices have more kernels than this..
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using Tapatalk

The slow of progress in the Slide has driven me to new levels in the android world. I have made many sad attempts at creating my own Roms from source...as well as several successful attempts at modifying a ROM to fit my needs...as well as creating batch files to do most of the the work for me when it comes to nightlies, but nothing original. I am sad to to see this phone in the state it is since this is the second phone I've had of the android family. (I've hacked many others for the purpose of profit) I still use and maintain several G1s...which re-enforces my dismay over the staleness of this device. My next buy is a G2x (LG Optimus 2x). I could wait for the 3D line in the next year but my boredom has eclipsed my interest 10 fold. I plan on passing this phone on to my wife when she gets home from active duty in South Korea. So all is not lost. I know this doesn't even belong in this sub-topic of the forum but I thought it worth sharing my opinion on.

Well in my attempt of waiting for several things to happen I just went online and pre-ordered my WIFI Motorola Xoom. I am very excited hoping this will not have me thinking about my slide that often awaiting the next best thing. I also have a Nokia Maemo phone which the firmware will be updated to Meego by the end of April so its a matter of waiting I guess. Well hopefully this thread will bring things back to life if not then I would like to say goodbye to my slide by the end of the year and get myself a new phone with more power yada yada. lol. Anways...

can someone send me miguel's kernel?
or tell me where I can find it?
i can't get my hands on it...
As for the HTC Slide. I just upgraded from my Motorola Cliq a few weeks ago.
It's definitely a big hardware boost, but the dev support is certainly less.

gtmaster303 said:
can someone send me miguel's kernel?
or tell me where I can find it?
i can't get my hands on it...
As for the HTC Slide. I just upgraded from my Motorola Cliq a few weeks ago.
It's definitely a big hardware boost, but the dev support is certainly less.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the bible do a ctrl+F and type miguel and you will find a link to the thread that should have what your looking for.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=924793

Actually they removed that thread a long time ago,the only way to get it is to get it from someone who has it.
As for the slide I still have mine and it's running strong. It's a nice little phone and I don't think support for it will fade entirely for a while, there's just not much else that needs to be done to improve it thanks to cyanogen.

dbzfanatic said:
Actually they removed that thread a long time ago,the only way to get it is to get it from someone who has it.
As for the slide I still have mine and it's running strong. It's a nice little phone and I don't think support for it will fade entirely for a while, there's just not much else that needs to be done to improve it thanks to cyanogen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
looks like the admins did a great job of wiping him off the face of xda

I actually posted a comment similar to this thread in the Gingersense thread. But yes I feel as if upgrading handsets will be the only way to get that "new phone" feeling I had got when first flashing cm6 and cm7 .
Edit: also this phone has yet to reach a year in age.(june or July)
And as far as flashplayer, its not the roms that don't support it but the UI. Sense UI was flash lite compatible but only armv7 processors are full flash capable.
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA App

Im sure most know, but maybe not the original poster, that this is not the place for this. Yes, you are talking about devs and roms and what-not, but this has nothing to add to the development community.
Yes, the slide does lack devs unfortunately. It is very sad that many devs did not take an interest in this device early on and those that did lost interest. I personally dont get it since i love this device. But the last thing to do is to complain about all that and just leave it at that. One of you said you tried to tinker with roms. Great! Thats what we need. We need people to get off their asses and take initiative. Lack of devs led me to attempt the port gingersense. I do not call myself a dev since i know 0 code and simply just know a few tricks, but at least i try. I would like to see more people start tinkering. If you love your slide, keep it alive. If you think you dont have the time, thats on you. I personally have a full time carreer which has crazy hours and a nearly full term pregnant wife (which means i have to do nearly everything around the house).
If you read this all, thx, i hope this sticks with someone.
Oh yeah, and admin plz move to appropriate section XD
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA App

I agree with most of what's been said. There really isn't much else we can do with the slide. With everything that's available to us, we have it, and that's about it. Since no one likes the mid-range of the slide and they all want the high-end awesomeness of the newer phones, the slide has few people to share their roms and themes.
I've had my slide since the very start of the slide era, and it is great with CM7 it does everything you want from a daily phone. I feel like I want something more tho, everything seems outdated with all of the new software and apps out there, we can't use them because of the slides hardware. Sad that's it's only been a year since it came out and it's outdated..tho I suppose launching the Galaxy S right after the slide launch just made it seem outdated weeks after.
As soon as I'm available for an upgrade in April I will be switching to a new phone; which I think most of us, who just want something more, are doing.

I got my slide on June 4th 2010, the day it was available for customers. I have loved my slide since. I learned soooo much about the Android OS and its capabilities since owning my Slide. I absolutely love it and want to hang onto it for as long as possible. It does everything I need it to do and it does it fast. Doesn't Cyanogens wife have a slide? I would think he would continue devving for it until his wife switches phones. Just a thought

It is endlessly amusing to me that someone would rather buy a phone out right simply because development has stopped....
You know the point was for YOU to get involved... right?

Listen I agree this is probably not the place for this but its a great place to voice my opinion to dev's which there is a huge shortage for this phone (this is my sole opinion). I have learned a ton from my slide. My first android phone was a maemo phone with a rigged android version on it. That made me want to get the slide because of android. I apologize if I offended people but just voicing my opinion on a topic that has been an ongoing discussion for many of us slide users.

Such little development on the slide?

Can anyone tell my why the mytouch slide development scene is so dead? Everytime I check there is only about 14 people view where as the ancient G1 has over 130 people every time. Filled with no roms that should even be possible on the g1. I even notice this in the droid forums as well but the slide is much faster than the droid yet they have a huge dev scene with a lot of AOSP development going on and they even have the popular miui rom. Anyone care to shed some light on this and give your thoughts?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=766002
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=838682
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=860308
We dead scares for almost 4 months last year. There might be an answer in one of those 3 threads.
I'm thinking a lot of the developers that were actually doing things got better phones and just moved on. There's still people out there with little surprises popping up... But yeah, it's kind of quiet around here.
I'd like to see an miui rom ;_;

biglo said:
Can anyone tell my why the mytouch slide development scene is so dead? Everytime I check there is only about 14 people view where as the ancient G1 has over 130 people every time. Filled with no roms that should even be possible on the g1. I even notice this in the droid forums as well but the slide is much faster than the droid yet they have a huge dev scene with a lot of AOSP development going on and they even have the popular miui rom. Anyone care to shed some light on this and give your thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey biglo ik that is what it seems like, but on the contrary, dev for the slide specifically might not be as active as Galaxy S, but as sefEXE said, suprises pop up. U hav to do a little searching to find what you want! So far i have found many things like small time roms and even HD HVGA hacked games (like nova, fast 5, etc.) on these very forums. more than likely they will be posted in a forum with a phone that is similar to the MT3GS, or in the android forum itself! trust and believe though that the android community has not forgotten the thing that put it on the map!
but i agree with sefEXE, miui rom wud b awesome
p.s. i am studying up on how to become a dev! may take time but i can do it , so expect the rom of a lifetime in the coming months (that is, if life doesnt come in and take all the freetime in my life away lol)

Thanks for the reply and good luck accomplishing your goal of becoming a dev. I was trying to learn how to theme but had to take a break.
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA Premium App

I'm actually pretty pleased with the dev community here. it's become sort of a niche. I love my slide. I only wish it had a 1ghz processor. I think what we have here is quality over quantity. The devs that stick with the slide do it because they love it. The few stable roms we have are great.

agreed with digitaldreamer7 ... i guess we will feel better when chacha and salsa roms are totally working, i will use this for a long time if those roms are totally working

i came from the cliq community at simply-android.com and their ROM selection is crazy. There is seriously over 50 ROMS to choose from and have some of the nicest ppl ever. i bought a slide bc i wanted cyanogen on my phone. and now the cliq has a fully functioning CM7 ROM. who would of thought.

cory0821 said:
i came from the cliq community at simply-android.com and their ROM selection is crazy. There is seriously over 50 ROMS to choose from and have some of the nicest ppl ever. i bought a slide bc i wanted cyanogen on my phone. and now the cliq has a fully functioning CM7 ROM. who would of thought.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 to everything you just said. EXACTLY same story as me

Cliq was a real ****ty phone though, and now the Cliq 2 has no roms.

Development is slow for NS

Not that I'm ungrateful or anything but I must admit that I am surprised at how slow development has been for the Nexus S. It's a nice bit of hardware that has enough power and potential to be used for all kinds of porting and development projects but instead there are only a few ROM's which are more or less based off the original ROM and don't really bring much to the table.
I say this because I recently bought a Galaxy S II and I've seen that the forum for that phone is far more active than here.
Anyway, I really appreciate all the work that people have put into Nexus S and I hope that it will still grow more popular!

Can I ask what carrier you're using?

The SGS2 has sold many more units; it's only natural that their forum is more active than ours.There are other factors that also add to the rather slow development you're seeing:
The NS comes with AOSP, which by many is regarded the superior form of Android. This coupled by the fact that the NS was released just before the beginning of the dawn of the DCs, results in a neglect of both Sense and TW ROMs. This isn't a big loss, but alternatives wouldn't be bad either, for that part.
What you are seeing is lots and lots of AOSP ROMs, and a single incomplete Sense ROM. That would generally be regarded as an unhealthy development community. But think about this: the NS has the heavy hitters such as CM7 and MIUI, smaller but incredibly solid ROMs as Oxygen. What you are seeing are a couple of quality ROMs, what you aren't seeing is lots of crap in between.
And don't forget the kernel developers who plays a big part in the Dev community.
Personally I enjoy the the NS immensely and I have high hopes that we'll go a long way together.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk

treUse said:
The SGS2 has sold many more units; it's only natural that their forum is more active than ours.There are other factors that also add to the rather slow development you're seeing:
The NS comes with AOSP, which by many is regarded the superior form of Android. This coupled by the fact that the NS was released just before the beginning of the dawn of the DCs, results in a neglect of both Sense and TW ROMs. This isn't a big loss, but alternatives wouldn't be bad either, for that part.
What you are seeing is lots and lots of AOSP ROMs, and a single incomplete Sense ROM. That would generally be regarded as an unhealthy development community. But think about this: the NS has the heavy hitters such as CM7 and MIUI, smaller but incredibly solid ROMs as Oxygen. What you are seeing are a couple of quality ROMs, what you aren't seeing is lots of crap in between.
And don't forget the kernel developers who plays a big part in the Dev community.
Personally I enjoy the the NS immensely and I have high hopes that we'll go a long way together.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 I had a Galaxy S (Vibrant) and all the ROMs were based off the OTA of TouchWiz. All of them are the SAME EXACT ROM. The only difference is that they appear differently and has been themed. That's the only difference. But in the end, under the hood. They're all the same exact ROM.
And that's cool you got the Galaxy S2. So shouldn't you go over to that forum instead of trying to brag about it on the Nexus S forum?
To dev for Android you don't have to be a big shot or anything. You could make ROMs yourself. But you don't, so don't complain about it if you aren't contributing.

CM7 and MIUI. What more do you need?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App

I use Mikeyinid_v.0.1 with the matr1x v3.0 kernel and it does just fine for me. Stock(AOSP, whatever) is better to me than some of the other ROMs. I don't see the developement as being slow, maybe a little more fickle but not slow. Most everything on these forums for the NS and NS4G is high quality with very few issues. You don't see that a lot for other devices. I think maybe a crapton of stuff isn't out for the Nexus is because it doesn't need it. It is kind of a minimalist phone in a way. It is made so you don't need as much crap developed for it to supplement it. Im sure if more people wanted the Sense ROM, it would be up by now. That's just my opinion, though. Right, wrong or indifferent.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA Premium App

treUse said:
The SGS2 has sold many more units; it's only natural that their forum is more active than ours.There are other factors that also add to the rather slow development you're seeing:
The NS comes with AOSP, which by many is regarded the superior form of Android. This coupled by the fact that the NS was released just before the beginning of the dawn of the DCs, results in a neglect of both Sense and TW ROMs. This isn't a big loss, but alternatives wouldn't be bad either, for that part.
What you are seeing is lots and lots of AOSP ROMs, and a single incomplete Sense ROM. That would generally be regarded as an unhealthy development community. But think about this: the NS has the heavy hitters such as CM7 and MIUI, smaller but incredibly solid ROMs as Oxygen. What you are seeing are a couple of quality ROMs, what you aren't seeing is lots of crap in between.
And don't forget the kernel developers who plays a big part in the Dev community.
Personally I enjoy the the NS immensely and I have high hopes that we'll go a long way together.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This summed it all up nicely. Well said.

it's pure google, so there is less to tweak and more about adding features. There can only be so many features added.

All valid points indeed however there is still room to grow and with a device that has the hardware to handle more than just AOSP and MIUI ROM's, I just feel it would be nice to have a few more options without going out and buying another phone. (I'm not made of money and I actually like the NS HW design)
I chose the NS partly due to the Nexus brand which proved to be very popular among developers with the Nexus One. It's all part of the fun of owning a Nexus phone.
To each his own I guess!

What development needs do you have that aren't being met?
My sense is that lots of people want constant change for its own sake rather than because there's any actual need for something to change.
Android is, fundamentally, a big pile of applications. Those don't need to be (and arguably shouldn't usually be) in the firmware. We each have the ability to install and run different ones as we need.
The firmware I currently use (the stock firmware) meets my present firmware needs completely. I don't look to firmware updates or custom "ROMs" to address my unmet needs - I look to the application development community for that.

From my experience in the evo forums (god bless the devs for what they can do, and no disrespect to the real devs and getting stuff working out of nothing and others) but the multiple sense based Roms with same tweaks with sometimes horrible themes thrown on top. The amount of Roms flowing didn't mean healthy just overcrowded with stuff that could have been a theme.
A nexus phone doesn't need alot of development due to it being aosp out of the box. Which alot of people want on their touchwiz\sense\blur phones so out of the box we have an experience that alot of people send alot of time trying to get on their phone.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App

I too was fairly disappointed to see the inactivity in the NS forums but I came to realize much of what was said here - this is already the most refined state of Android.
Coming from the Captivate which had a huge following, it caught me off guard that the dev phone would have less of a community than a normal consumer phone. However, we don't consider why people buy Nexus S' to begin with. Most of it's buyers know that this is Pure Android and buy it with such in mind. We don't want TouchWiz; we don't want Motoblur; we don't want Sense; and we don't want whatever crap LG puts on their phones. We want Pure Android and we got it. The only things we may want additionally would be other smaller features (notification toggles, BLN, OC/UV etc.) and we got it too from the community.
If you look at other communities, they "dev" for features that we already have. They dev for:
1. The removal of bloat (carrier crap).
2. Newer Android updates ("leaked" firmware which are buggy to begin with).
3. Different themes (most are ugly or try to theme to AOSP).
4. Better performance (minor if any change at all).
5. New features.
#1, 2 and 4 are things Nexus S already has. We, as Nexus S owners, don't necessarily want #3 at all as we love how Pure Android looks. #5 is what our community pretty much consist of as the new features such as BLN, OC/UV, Voodoo, and notification toggles are "our" ROMs. No wonder all of our ROMs are AOSP-like right? We don't need #1-4, we just want some of #5.
And really, what else do we really need?
The only thing I ask for are:
1. An aftermarket kernel that can OC/UV and has Voodoo and BLN. (multiple kernels with such)
2. Minimalistic ROMs. (Oxygen and some others)
3. Feature-rich ROMs. (CM7, MIUI)
All are satisfied and done so quite well.

Zardos66 said:
CM7 and MIUI. What more do you need?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What he said, we got everything we need. No need to go through hoops and barrels to get aosp. We also got awesome kernel development as well
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA App

Trust me, there is everything you need here.
Coming from an incredible, I am so pleased with my NS4G.
When gingerbread sense leaked for the dinc, there was a Ridiculous amount of Roms released. It was just getting silly.
A few solid Roms and some great kernels is all you need.
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using XDA Premium App

If someone could fix the battery issues with the Sprint version, that would be great! ;-)
(at this point the Sprint Nexus battery does not last half as long as my OG Evo with similar usage...)

zephiK said:
+1 I had a Galaxy S (Vibrant) and all the ROMs were based off the OTA of TouchWiz. All of them are the SAME EXACT ROM. The only difference is that they appear differently and has been themed. That's the only difference. But in the end, under the hood. They're all the same exact ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This x1000. I had a Captivate and everyone raved about the choices they had but didn't realize that it was TW with the living daylights themed out of it. I would rather have a few quality ROM's than 50 of the exact same thing.
See if you feel the same way when ICS is released. Lol.
adb shove iPad2post.apk to /forum/thread

I was thinking the same thing as OP. Although I'm glad I have a Nexus S, it's so easy to flash ROMs and things. I've been sorting out a 2.1 Eclair Motorola Defy for my friend and it was a nightmare!
I would love to see what else this baby can do though, maybe USB host for starters.

Well, I think I agree with the general consensus already established in this thread.
We do have it good from the get go as nexus owners. The AOSP roms are for the most part all round excellent and do not really cry out for huge amount of changes and or variations.
There's no bloatware installed. No custom skin to eat away all the ram and slow things down. No big issues.
The roms are fast, stable and real clean.
Overall I'm quite happy with all the good work of the nexus s development community. We have some good choices available.
Feature rich roms such as Cyanogen and MIUI...and light rock solid roms such as Oxygen, Infin1ty and Axura.
Also some great kernels from netarchy and the Trinity team. All in all I think we've got it real good. Especially when one takes a look at some of the other handsets development community.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

I think there's a lot of hubris going on here. Sure, AOSP is fine, but there isn't a single product out there that can't be improved...
Personally, from my experiences running stock, I've wished that there are a lot of configurations that were more customizable. Most of these options are hidden away, like masking the browser user agent string. Personally, I prefer OSes that are extremely lightweight, stable and reliable with minimal cruft but still extremely customizable, even if it means that you have to put more effort than normal into making things work. Yes I'm really picky... I've found that Arch Linux suits me most on the desktop, but I'm not sure yet what ROM will suit me most. So maybe I'll end up building something myself.
But it's just like there's no single Linux distro that's the best; rather there are many different options to choose from. Diversity allows you to take a good product and make it great! Call me an idealist if you like

My current device is the Epic. After reading through this thread I'm sold. My son had been wanting my Epic for a long time. I'm going out and tomorrow and picking up a Nexus S. Thanks
To the OP: if you want to see slow development and pissed off people go visit the Epic forums. Everyone waiting on a leak or God forbid an official release. I'm envious!