The TF101 as we all know is already a dated device, but it doesnt mean it won’t compete against the current slew of devices out and about right now. ICS was the last official update for the TF101 and it surely seems that there would be no more to come… this is where Android and its flourishing developer pool come into play.
CyanogenMod or CM is one of those very renowned teams that work on alternative Android flavors compatible to most devices on the market. It spans all levels of the commercial spectrum from entry level smartphones to flagships as long as theyre able to test it. You can usually track down developments on XDA developers among other community forums dedicated to specific devices. The flavor of Android that I’ve decided to put on mine was based on CM but rewritten and improved by RaymanFX enough to make it stable with close to all functions working as they should.
When you tinker with an Android device you would encounter some very important terms such as Kernel, Recovery, APX, Root, and Flash and if you’re not familiar with any of these then I highly suggest you do not go about trying anything out as you might brick your phone/tablet (brick – so called because if you did something wrong, your device ends up as one… a brick/paperweight).
The entire flash sequence writes the OS files into the system through a Windows/Linux interface (dont know if you could do this with a Mac… in which case Id be surprised because you’ll most likely be on an iPad). Usually, consistent flashers use Titanium Backup to quickly flash and revert their system to working state but I wanted to cleanly install applications with this version because it is a new OS, although since they are writing to the same sdcard location and I didnt clean up the internal memory, installing some of the previous apps which require downloads would automatically see the old files and they already work.
Above is the screenshot of the system version as it is now – Android 4.1.1 Jellybean!
This is a very bare OS kind of like an optimized version, it does not even come with Google apps and you have to flash that as well, I dont even have Maps on mine yet. You can see above that it barely fills up one page of apps whereas before I did this I had up to five screens filled… I’ve even already installed 9 apps on this screenshot imagine that!
I might make a video on the experience with the machine on JB to give it justice… especially “Project Butter” as implemented in a Tegra2 platform. Most of the changes are on interface improvement and as this is a CM release, it doesnt look anything like the official ones from Asus before.
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