# Did Droid2 Global development followed the wrong path?



## JoeMaldo (Jul 25, 2014)

Dear friends, as a newbie is very little what I have to say about development. Only from the point of view of an enthusiastic user you will have my input. The point here is: I have tried practically every Rom released I could put hands on it (dead links as a limitation), and trust me, some of them are really awesome. And, certainly, behind every one of them, is uncounted hours of insomnia and who knows what else sacrifice, taken by developers, my gratitude to you all!. All of this looks like an unfinished job.

Curiously, in my first attempt I had an incredible experience by using the "wrong one" Rom on my global. This is the "Spitmare", which is dedicated for the Droid 2 only. It worked beautiful!. I followed all instructions very carefully, as is recommended in TomSargeant's (rootjunky) video. The results where, a brand new like device, very shiny and handsome, and above all, very fast and nimble.

Needless to say that even though this beauty was so much efficient, there where some little mishaps affecting it. No light in the keyboard, and it did not show any relevant info in the "about phone" section. And this is due to differences between models, in fact the droid2 Global seems to differ with Droid2, perhaps in base band coding.

It would be interesting if someone of this hard core devs, decides to modify the "spitmare" to be suitable for use in the Global, That -IMHO- will be the Crown for the winner.! Looking forward to hear from you. Thanks.


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## themib (Sep 14, 2011)

Just use the Pooka-CM4D2G-GB-20120519

and 7.1 Gapps


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## JoeMaldo (Jul 25, 2014)

Dear sir themib, thank you for the quick response to my post. I really appreciate your time and dedication to this great activity. I must say you are a very organized person (one of the best devs), and I will not hesitate to route anyone who needs help, to your databases. I have the files you recommended, and as soon I use them, will post how they worked. Have a nice day!


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## JoeMaldo (Jul 25, 2014)

Ok, as promised I'm publishing the outcome of the installation of the *Pooka-CM4D2G-GB-20120516r1*.

No doubt, is one of the best ROM yet installed, and a magnificent approach to what "it should be". Relatively easy to flash not using the bootstrap method and only with the Rom Manager utility. Here is what I've found:

*Pros*: Very customizable, with lots of options in visual appeal and functionality, it has to be flashed all together with the Google applications. No bloatware, which is a blessing, and sort of bold in icon design, with beautiful wallpaper options, still pics and live animations. And again, it did not acknowledge internet connection using the *WIFI slider*, so I sorted the situation, installing a *WIFI Theter utility,* that in order to work, had to "disable" the "crippled" WIFI to setup itself successfully, (I imagine, that some coding lines required a "little push" command) then I disabled it and that made the trick. The WIFI was working after that. No icon generated for the Google Market, and the You Tube as well, but they showed in the active process list. Keyboard light resolved (alive and working full time). Charging issues resolved (that's great!) and nothing else to whish, except for the following:

*Cons:* No speech engine active. This capability in GB is crucial, especially for the Droid2 Global and any other device with slider KB. One of the best qualities of the global is that when you are texting, you can actually dictate (if you are I a hurry) your text to your device, because the keyboard's "bubble" key design is so inefficient, The microphone icon key (next to the @ key) serves beautifully as a "secretary" that writes down every word you say, in every language, with fair efficiency. So this is the main flaw, this ROM has.

Another Con (a big one, but not the ROM itself), is that the current Kernel has enabled a lock that prevents the customer to add RAM memory to the system, using SWAP partition in SDcard. That folks, has to be resolved. I would like to know if another kernel (only) could be flashed to this ROM.

The current one in my phone is: *[email protected] #1*.

The Phone is not activated to any service provider, and never will, because is dedicated to research only. Thank you very much for looking, and we'll keep posting as it goes. Special thanks to* themib*!.

*Some sources for this post.*

This video at You Tube, shows the speech engine in *STT* mode (speech to text) in action, and it's the most common use for Android (voice commands), and IOS (Siri)..






The "*backwards*" mode is the *TTS* (text to speech), a common feature in some online translation sites.

Cell phones with slider KB's are disappearing very fast, Some people likes them, some others don't. That's why is so important to keep the original key layout "linked" to the original functions. Customizing Firmware to make it efficient, does not mean that key functions should be suppressed.

On the other hand, here is a video that shows how useful is to be able to use *Voice to Text message function*. Sorry I could not find a video for the Droid2 Global, but it works the same way as any other brand, or system.


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## JoeMaldo (Jul 25, 2014)

*This is an update on this post*:

As a told you earlier, I was having problems with some icons to appear, but now, I'm happy to announce this has been solved, by adding the right Gapps file. This is the *gapps-gb-20110613-signed*, instead of the gapps-gb-20110828-signed . This has allowed me to use the Google Market function, and now I can download any apk from the net. So I installed the Voice Search program, and is working. So far, everything works as expected. Sadly there is no response in the *Microphone key*, on the slider KB, which tells me, it's not mapped and no built in *speech engine* is installed.

The way things are added to the Android System, should lead to a solution, when we need a "patch" to resolve some deficiencies or limitations in both OS (Operative System) and Kernel. that should be made much simpler, without "redundancy" or repetition of complex task.

I'm downloading the necessary programs and files to learn how to mod, and hopefully, be able to cooperate with the community. The "Spitmare " is my target.

Thank you for reading.


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