Google Posts Factory Images and Binaries for Second Generations Nexus 7 Modders
After what can only be described as a tumultuous week, Google has finally gone and posted a factory image and binaries for its 2013 model Nexus 7 codenamed "razor." Unfortunately for the open source community, the delay in making these files available to the public led to the resignation of Jean-Baptiste Queru (JBQ), former Technical Lead of Google's Android Open Source Project.
JBQ can be considered one of the good guys and frequently made himself available on Google Groups to answer questions posed by developers. He also played a big role in keeping everything about Android 'open' to the community.
It's widely believed that Qualcomm was the reason it took so long to post a factory image and binaries. A Qualcomm SoC powers the Nexus 7, and the chip maker isn't nearly as 'open' as the operating system its powering in Google's newest device.
In any event, the files are available now, and if you plan on modding or otherwise experimenting with the underlying code, you may want to grab the factory image in case things go wrong. In addition, we should start to see some interesting ROMs pop up as a result of these files.
JBQ can be considered one of the good guys and frequently made himself available on Google Groups to answer questions posed by developers. He also played a big role in keeping everything about Android 'open' to the community.
It's widely believed that Qualcomm was the reason it took so long to post a factory image and binaries. A Qualcomm SoC powers the Nexus 7, and the chip maker isn't nearly as 'open' as the operating system its powering in Google's newest device.
In any event, the files are available now, and if you plan on modding or otherwise experimenting with the underlying code, you may want to grab the factory image in case things go wrong. In addition, we should start to see some interesting ROMs pop up as a result of these files.
