This post is long overdue; my apologies for that.
Obviously, the XDAndroid Project has been inactive for quite some time. Despite that inactivity and the age of the hardware, some people still like to tinker around with it. One of the things I like about the XDA community is that there will be people playing with hardware for years and years… very few of the forums are permanently dead.
On that note, I received an email from a user pointing out that the non-US download mirror for our file repository is dead. I have disabled geographical load balancing since we don’t really need it anymore. All files are now served by the main server in New Jersey, USA. I will continue to maintain that server indefinitely.
Since the project is inactive, I have closed donations and removed all links to the paypal donations page. Disbursing the remainder of the donations account will be done eventually. I currently use funds only for renewing the domain name — the server hosting XDAndroid content is also my personal server, so I don’t feel right using project funds for that expense.
Lastly, the IRC logs were down for a while. I have restored those to a working state in case anybody needs to search for information from when the project was active. IRC was our main collaborative environment.
In closing, the skyrocketing of Android’s market share has obsoleted the XDAndroid Project, of course. In addition, projects whose goal were to introduce a stock flavor of Android on phones with manufacturer customizations, have been obsoleted by the introduction of low-cost, unlocked, stock Android devices (the Nexus line) by Google. While the death of projects is unfortunate, users now have more freedom than ever in mobile devices.
A market that was once dominated by Windows Mobile and Blackberry has become a competitive war ground featuring several combatants. Apple and Google have helped level the playing field on the device side. As a result, we have seen significant advancements in user experience and hardware. It’s a great time to be a smartphone user.
Thanks to all the developers who have helped XDAndroid extend the life of great phones that came with crap software. Thanks to Pierre for running the show throughout its most successful time. And thanks to all the users who helped the developers, tested, commented, donated, and helped each other — this project would have been nothing without you.
(By the way, a few of us are still on IRC! Drop by and say hi!)