Omni Development Updates

The response to Omni so far has been amazing, more than I originally thought. We have many device maintainers who have come on-board and have been already able to bring Omni to almost a couple dozen devices, and many people are helping us on various things on the distribution. We are a bit overwhelmed by the amount of patches submitted to us, but we’re slowly making our way through them.

Thanks to the amazing and talented developers we have on the team, we are already seeing an experimental build of Omni 4.4 (Android 4.4 'Kitkat') for the Galaxy Note N7000, with the international Galaxy S III (i9300), the Nexus 4, the Nexus 5, the Nexus 7, the LG Optimus G, the Galaxy S II (i9100G OMAP variant), the Oppo Find 5, Sony Xperia T, and many more to come. We successfully tested our nightly build system with Android 4.3, and we hope to provide official Omni 4.4 nightly builds for some of these devices in the coming days.

But we are really just getting started. We already showed you the potential of Omni through our first big feature, Multi-window, as well as many of our cosmetic enhancements. In addition to those we have been working on more ‘common’ changes to let you better master your Android device. Now that Kitkat is here, it’s a good time to begin some of our other innovations. We merged back our Android 4.3 progress over the past few days, and now we can go on. Other than just getting Multi-window fully done (and we are really close), we are also looking forward to start some of our other big changes, such as:

• Our universal, open source Omni Installer (which actually already works with a couple devices)
• A lightweight, and fully open and secure, OTA system
• More customization… Than what you ever could think of :)
• Never-before-seen security features (deniable PIN, NFC challenge unlock, different encrypted locations…)
• Multi-workspace
• OmniLink, an open interface for multiple backend providers of various services (it’s cooler than it sounds)
• More (useful) audio filters in DSP Manager to enhance your audio experience
• Roadrunner mode
• Non-intrusive call notification
• Stock SMS app enhancements
• Stock Dialer app enhancements
• Daydream enhancements
• and many, many, many (did we say "many"?) more things are on the roadmap.

I’m also excited to see some Kitkat-exclusive features that have already landed in Omni, such as a Volume-Power key combo to conveniently start and stop recording your screen (see https://gerrit.omnirom.org/1607). This is only a first step, and there are some other cool things to come around this.

I’m personally really pleased to see these features coming along, and as you can imagine I’ve already made some huge progress on some of them. All the technical details for each of these changes will appear progressively on our Jira in the CONCEPT section, so the developers among you will be able to join and help us making this happen more quickly. I’m also thrilled to be able to be so transparent about what we’re doing, and what we’re going to do in the near future.

Some of our scripts and tools have been really useful for external developers (for example our OmniBot Patch Verifier), and this is really what Omni is all about: enhancing Android for everyone. All the main Omni contributors are more than happy to help other teams, and some are even actively doing so. On the user end, we’ve had some incredible feedback from you, along with some really cool ideas from you on our XDA ideas thread which shows that there is room for improvement on Android.

All in all, stay tuned. Device builds and features will begin to roll out during the coming weeks, and I promise you will get something special for Christmas. Round of applause for all of you, and we’re back to work!

[Featured image courtesy of Get What Com Planning]