CyanogenMod is a customized version of Android that adds additional features to your smartphone. CyanogenMod 7 made its debut Sunday night; I follow Cyanogen, and while I missed the release party that happened via tinychat (it was tinychat, right?), I have to say I was excited by the news. A Nexus S owner on T-Mobile, I've been running CM7 RC4 just waiting for a bonafide release to update. I'm hoping for some extended battery life, it's about the only "fix" I think CM7 needed on the Nexus S.

CM7 is based on the Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) kernel (Gingerbread was released initially with the ). While it isn't a release slated to hit most phones by default (2.4 is the next official release, rumor has it), many ROM makers have embraced Gingerbread as the release to hack onto phones. Having a Nexus S at release and running Gingerbread, I can't disagree. It's worlds better than 2.1, and decent strides ahead of 2.2 as well.

It's necessary to root your phone to run it, with the list of devices running it grows from about 30 currently. Were I you, I'd head over to right now and check the changelog and if your device is supported. If and when you flash, make sure you check out the forums there as well, it's full to the rim with helpful advice.

Geez, what are you waiting for?

[via ]