Xposed is now officially official on Lollipop. This means that people on Android 5.1 Lollipop who want to customize their Android experience without installing a custom ROMÂ can now do so.
For those not familiar with the Xposed framework, what it does is, allow someone to modify their stock ROM with customized modules. Xposed itself does not modify the ROM in any other way, other than providing the framework to do so. Instead, Xposed requires modules to be downloaded that modify certain aspects of the ROM.
Why would anyone who wants to modify their ROM not just install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod? I think that people that have specialized devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note series don’t necessarily want to lose things like the S Pen functionality, so this becomes their only way to modify the device’s core functionality to suit their needs.
In my case, I use an Asus PadFone X that has a tablet dock. Any custom ROMs currently available do not support the tablet dock. This is a real deal killer for me as it’s the only reason to have a PadFone. My solution? Xposed framework. I’ve been able to customize my lock screen, tweak the status bar, add screen recording, and custom screen off animations.
Of course in order to use Xposed, you’ll need to first root your phone, but if you’re interested in trying it out feel free to check it out at XDA developers.
Keep in mind that if you are using a Samsung phone running Lollipop, you’ll need to find a modified version of Xposed, because of the way that Samsung has modified the ART runtime. Also, certain Sony phones have shipped with a corrupted services.odex (the embedded .dex is invalid). Those ROMs will boot loop with a “Fatal signal 6” error.
What do you think? Are going to take Xposed for a spin? Let us know in the comments below.
“Why would anyone who wants to modify their ROM not just install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod?”
Let me rephrase that: “Why would anyone install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod, when they can modify stock to behave exactly like they want using their Xposed modules of choice?”.
Xposed is primarily for stock based ROMs, so it’s not about retaining functionality of custom third party features as you’ve referenced. I have no desire to use a custom ROM that fixes the features I have access to based on what they define as “worthy”, and then, in most cases, precludes me, as such from even being able to run the Xposed framework.
I use Xposed on stock so that I can select / choose / apply the apply n-many modules that collectively results in the exact features I need / functionality I want, and nothing else, all the while continuing as “stock”.
BTW, so now that 5.1 is “officially” supported, time to wait for an unofficial marshmallow version soon!
Well said.