By Stephen Schenck | July 10, 2012 1:11 PM
CDMA devices have been a thorn in the side of the AOSP for some time now. Google explained the issues at hand when it made a statement back in February, pointing out how the need for carrier-signed binaries containing critical communications code was getting in the way of developers being able to build Android for these devices. Luckily, things started looking up just last week, with new binaries becoming available for the Nexus S 4G on Sprint. At the time, the situation still looked bleak for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. A week later, the tide has really turned, and last night’s publication of the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean source saw the arrival of some eagerly awaited binaries for the VZW GNex. Where are the equivalent files for the Sprint GNex, though?
In the past, the AOSP only had WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPU binary drivers for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. With Jelly Bean arriving, the phone gets its very necessary CDMA/LTE binary, as well as one for the handset’s orientation sensor. To be fair, these might not be ready for use in a daily driver just yet, and they’re referred to as “experimental” for the time being.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the Sprint Galaxy Nexus will be seeing a similar release any time soon. Google’s Jean-Baptiste Queru explains that “there are no plans to support it as a target device for custom AOSP builds“. Whether that’s due to disinterest on Sprint’s part, or another party’s, we can’t say. It’s interesting, at least, that the Nexus S 4G is working like a charm, while this other Samsung Sprint model is unsupported, making us think that LTE (or rather, the phone’s LTE hardware) may be the key to this lack of support.
