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Mobile Crunch are reporting an interesting piece of information that reveals just how popular modding in the Android ionosphere really is and just how many people like to do it. The tech blog is reporting that a ‘hacked’ Android 2.2 ROM for the Motorola Droid downloaded 40,000 times in a week.
After running through their article we really like their methodology because it has been independently performed, almost inadvertently. When Peter Alfonso, a MOD developer himself, released a highly customised version of Android 2.2 for the Motorola Droid, he put the link through bit.ly (A short URL alternative) and posted it on Twitter. After one week of downloads, bit.ly statistics report that there were a total of nearly 40,000 downloads (37,642 to be exact).
At first glance this might not really sound like much. But this is for one device, for one week. Consider all the ROM hacks created for the HTC Magic, Hero, Nexus One and all the others. It strikes me as though the number of people ready to ‘hack’ their own devices is significantly higher than what we all might have expected. Especially when considering the fact that this, in most cases, voids your warranty and runs a high risk of ‘bricking’ your device. A technical term, don’t know you?
To put things in perspective, Peter Alfonso released a vanilla version of Android 2.2 for download at the same time. This only achieved 1,000 downloads. Sure, the lower numbers might be due to the availability of vanilla Android 2.2 elsewhere, but it still serves as some form of control in this crazy experiment.
[Via Mobile Crunch]