Developers take first steps towards CyanogenMod on Galaxy S6

Developers on the XDA forum have taken the first steps towards running Cyanogenmod on a Samsung Galaxy S6 by getting the graphics driver working. Most of the hardware, such as WiFi, sound, sensors and GPS, does not yet work.

After developers managed to boot Android a few weeks ago without getting output on the screen, they have now also succeeded in getting the screen controls working. In a post on XDA, developer arter97 explains that this required a lot of work on Android’s gralloc module, which handles graphics memory management.

A video on Youtube shows Cyanogenmod’s boot screen, after which the phone continues to boot. Apart from the graphics driver, little works and the developers still have to work with, for example, wifi, bluetooth, audio, sensors and the calling functionality.

Phones equipped with Samsung’s Exynos socs are known to be very difficult to precompile firmwares based on Android source code, because Samsung hardly releases documentation and source code for the hardware. This means that developers have to rely on reverse engineering to find out exactly how the drivers work.

Chip designer Qualcomm takes a different approach and gives a lot of support to developers. That is why there is no version of Cyanogenmod for a popular device such as the Galaxy S6, while many devices with Qualcomm socs are supported.