A day ago I was just occupied writing an article for one of the many pages I write for (actually now that I think of it, I write for 3 different pages so there aren’t that many of them). In any case, I was busy writing an article on how community affects the overall gaming experience. How by the simple fact that you have people you can talk to, or people who simply share your opinions on games, on the latest developments in that field, can help you out when you’re hitting a wall or can simply make your stay in that community a lot better.

The case with the Android community is that it’s based heavily on how people are modifying or adjusting their overall feel of the platform. How the community can help you solve any problems you might encounter on your Android device and how this can improve your general history with said product. In this aspect, a few days ago I wrote an article regarding the Motorola Cliq XT and how Motorola, despite trying, could not get Android 2.1 Éclair working under acceptable conditions on it. This happens with more devices than you might think, but this is why we have an ever growing community.

A lot of you might know already that I’m a sucker for Motorola products, and I enjoyed the Motorola Droid or Milestone (whichever you prefer really) because of the QWERTY keyboard, the great feel it had when held and so on. Thanks to Peter Alfonso, a great member of the Android community, the Droid might just get a longer lifespan. He has developed the Android 2.3.3 ROM for the Motorola Droid. Although, after you download it you might find it as a stock version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread there are quite a few modifications added by the developer.

The largest issue about the device running 2.3 was compiling Gingerbread for the device. The build was made using the master branch of the AOSP a few days ago, meaning that it will come not only with the 2.3.3 version but also with some of the latest fixes. The ROM comes with the stock signature Droid boot animation, the ringtones, wallpaper set, 2D launcher as well as Neural Network live wallpaper. There are some modifications added by the developer as well as some custom mods provided by the community.

As officially, the Motorola Droid will never see Android 2.3 Gingerbread running on it, there are never accurate builds to go by. Because of this, the build number is modified in order to get a better grasp on what you are running, and you will get to see the latest builds on the developers webpage in the Downloads section. The build number for this release is GPA10, an abbreviation from Gingerbread, Peter, Alfonso while the number will be increasing as new builds will be added.

Note that there aren’t any market apps installed on this ROM other than the Car Home app and the Quick Search Box, so you will have to manually install YouTube, Gmail, Street View, Voice Search and the sorts. In case you do experience some lag in performance you can get a quick overclocking tool mentioned on the developers webpage and you will get your ROM to 800 MHz by it.

So for those of you still running 2.2 maybe on your Motorola Droids make sure to head over to Peter Alfonso and get your fresh copy of this ROM. Also make sure to say the guy thanks the very least and give some credit to the community who managed to get your device up-to-date. Until next time, I’ll be busy playing around with Gingerbread on my Milestone.1

February 13th, 2011 Catalin Mengheris