My Android phone is an LG L38C with Android 2.3.6, rooted. I have been very happy with it until recently as its OS version is now considered to be quite ancient. Have looked around for ROMs with newer versions and sadly have found none - just modified versions of the same one. This brings me to my question: Why is there not a way to put a generic & newer version of Android into most any made for Android device ?? This just baffles me. I think of windows with its need for specific drivers vs. how easy it is to transfer a Linux system between different h/w and really wonder why Android OS versions are so restricted. Will someone please educate me on this ?? Thanks.
Got it. Thanks Bunches SlimRock - you've given a great explanation and now I get it. Thanks Very Much !!!
building a rom from source requires several things, the first of which involves some basic C and make knowledge, along with half a brain. some sadly just don't have that lol. sometimes there are closed-source parts that the manufacturer used to build the factory system, and some of those closed source files might not be compatible with newer/older android versions, and if these in any way involve interacting between the kernel and device specific hardware (which 99% of such things do) then it is unlikely that said hardware would be able to run another android version without having those closed-source files. this is not the case generally though. most of the time the only reason a custom rom doesn't exist for a device is because no one has really tried to build one. you will find though that many devices that came with gingerbread like your phone were not made to handle ics and later versions and many can't handle later versions because they lack the ram and processing power to make the system useable. best thing you can do is sync the cyanogenmod gingerbread source and start trying to build gingerbread for your phone. you will need the kernel source as well as information pulled from the device itself such as the architecture of the cpu, gpu components, and the proprietary files that the factory system depends on.
if you'll post a build.prop from your phone, as well as the kernel config file from /proc/config.gz (if it exists--some kernels do not have this activated) on your phone, i could probably build a newer version of gingerbread for your phone. ics might be possible but the screen size is less than ideal for it
Thanks Loads Stayboogy: I will try to locate those files sometime in the next few days here when I'll have a little time to myself to try and find them. Thanks !!