Replicant 4.0 0004 images release

The last months have been rather calm for Replicant development, no big changes or improvements were made. That doesn’t mean the project stalled: instead, we added support for some new devices. The previous set of images added support for the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1/7.0 in their 3G versions and we were requested to provide images for the WiFi-only flavors of these tablets as well. Since it only requires very little work, we were able to quickly fulfill that request, even though we couldn’t test it ourselves (you’re more than welcome to spot and report issues about these devices).

However, the biggest part of what motivated us to build and release new images is the support for the Galaxy S3 device in its international GT-I9300 GSM version (not the LTE one or any other country-specific variant). Currently, only graphics acceleration, camera and GPS support are missing (some other features may need non-free firmwares that run on separate chips). A couple of other things are also missing due to technical limitations (NFC, FM radio).

We are still trying hard to bring Replicant to the Goldelico GTA04, but it couldn’t make it to that release either as we still need help bringing a reliable Android kernel to that platform (DM37x).

A more complete changelog is also available, highlighting in details what was changed. Special thanks to the team at CyanogenMod who fixed EXIF in the free Galaxy S2 camera module implementation I wrote but was too lazy to correctly implement EXIF into.

You can download the images from the ReplicantImages page and find installation instructions as well as build guides on the Replicant wiki.

16 thoughts on “Replicant 4.0 0004 images release

  1. Nice Work. I always hated it when Google used the source code of Android and shipped with it’s applications what were proprietary. It they had to prove their ingenuity in Mobile Systems development, why not they make a system themselves, why ruin the development of FREE SOFTWARE. If they do not support Free Software Movement, they deserve no right to play with Free Software at all.

  2. Pingback: Donate to Replicant and support free software on mobile devices | Ethics of technology in the age of the internet

  3. Pingback: Android, Open Source და Free Software Foundation - GO! Electronics Blog

  4. We are not working on writing free replacements for WiFi firmwares. If you want to get started on this, please get in touch with us, but keep in mind it is a very hard and technical task.

  5. Hi,
    I installed last Replicant release on my Samsung Tab 2 7″ a few days ago and it’s great!

    The only annoying thing to me is lack of wifi, but at the moment I’m using mtp-tools to copy files on the device and adb to install apks downloaded from F-Droid…

    Is someone working on BCM4330 firmware?
    Can I help in some way (I’m a developer)?

  6. I can’t tell, we haven’t evaluated it. However if it doesn’t run CyanogenMod yet, it’ll be very hard to port Replicant to it.

  7. Hi,

    I have a Lenovo Thinkpad here, with Android 4.03. It’s already rooted, and a CWM is on it. Is this an interesting device ?

    -John

  8. I wish there would be video updates too of every version of replicant that is released.
    You could upload the video in your website, it doesn’t have to be youtube.
    Also a very good idea would be to make a “how to” install it for dummies. And a “how to” reinstall android if something important doesn’t work.
    Hope you continue to keep updating it!!
    Thanks!

  9. We will try to port over to 4.2 or 4.3 at some point in the future, can’t really tell when.
    It seems like Galaxy S3 is already fairly new. We’ll see for S4, we haven’t evaluated it yet.

  10. You’ve got a point. Having nice graphics and good-looking websites or videos or anything else attracts people (and I am the sort of person who is sensible to these things). Though, we either are bad at doing this or don’t have time, so if anyone wants to build us a kick-ass new website, I see no problem with that.

  11. @PaulK Thanks for your reply! I understand what you say about Youtube. Goblin?
    And maybe another idea if you’d wish to consider it, CyanogenMod guys are taking your eyes with their cool website look&feel. Have you considered imporving at least your theme?
    Maybe you don’t say, but improving the look&feel of anything attracts a LOT of users and developers. This is something Canonical knows and part of their success is because of that.
    @Abraham I’d rather stick to a single model and make it work rather than having more models which don’t work very good. I’d pay anything for a free smartphone.

    Thanks a lot for your work, guys, you’re doing a tremendous job!!!

  12. Some of the phones we added support for a couple years ago like the Nexus S or Galaxy S can be found pretty cheap second hand nowadays. Sorry the models we select are always the expensive ones, but they are the good candidates and already have many users.

  13. If your suggestion is that we create a Youtube account to post videos of Replicant running, that’s clearly not going to happen. On the one hand, Youtube remains accessible through non-free software mostly (flash and/or non-free javascript) but it is also a centralized web service that brings no good to keep the internet neutral and uncentralized.

    However, we could indeed post pictures and demos from time to time, that wouldn’t hurt (and I’m too the kind of person who prefers to see things running before installing them). Though, it won’t be so different from CyanogenMod or any AOSP-based Android experience as we didn’t modify the interface or anything like that: the experience is just the same, with lacking pieces (depending on the device, it may be missing Camera, missing GPS, etc) and generally speaking, the device is a bit slower due to the lack of graphics acceleration, but I’m not sure a video would spot it out.

    I’ll keep a note about improving our communication through video/pictures of Replicant. Thanks for your comment.

  14. Great work but…you would definitely get more support if you’d promotote yourself :|
    You have no promotion, no videos on Youtube. How can anyone see it working if no videos on Youtube are posted? Aren’t there any demos anywhere? Not even pictures?

    I’ve heard of you from Dr. Richard Stallman. Really? I’m very much into tech and I happened to watch one of his videos. How do you expect people to support you if you don’t event do a demo on Youtube? :| :| :|

    How is this even possible?

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