Samsung Courts Modders With Free Smartphones

CyanogenMod developers received free Samsung Galaxy S II phones, the successors to its highly successful Galaxy S (pictured above). Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

There’s no sure-fire way to silence software modders, so you might as well work with them. That seems to be the idea Samsung had with a group of phone hackers.

Four members of the CyanogenMod software team on Monday received Galaxy S II smartphones in the mail, direct from the company at no charge.

“All four of us involved in the porting process for the first Galaxy S received a new phone,” CyanogenMod team member Kolja Dummann told Wired.com in an interview. “After the [Galaxy S II] launched in Europe, we just asked about getting some of those phones. Samsung agreed.”

The phones came with one simple directive — get CyanogenMod working on the phone.

Essentially, CyanogenMod replaces the stock operating system on your Android phone with a customized build, letting you make tweaks and adjustments that you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to before. Customizations range from changing visual details — like slapping a sleek new uniform skins onto the user interface — to under-the-hood boosts like overclocking the phone’s CPU.

It’s uncommon for a device manufacturer to hand phones over to a community of developers like CyanogenMod. Companies like Motorola and HTC are known to ship devices with locked bootloaders, essentially restricting a user’s ability to customize his or her phone. While frustrating to budding modders, locking the phone down also prohibits a number of headaches on the carriers’ end — like the phone returns that come from users screwing up their devices in attempts to modify them.

“I’ve never heard of vendors giving phones to CyanogenMod or other community developers,” Dummann said. The CyanogenMod development team typically relies on donations from the developer community at large, or purchasing the devices themselves.

Samsung’s gesture is one of many recent manufacturer moves to court the developer community. Last week, HTC announced it would no longer ship smartphones with locked bootloaders. Motorola has also flirted with the idea of future unlocked device releases, though the developer community remains skeptical.

Phone makers on other platforms are starting to follow suit as well. Earlier this year, Microsoft reportedly met with a group of Windows Phone 7 hackers to see how the company could better support “homebrew” apps (or third-party applications that don’t require Microsoft’s approval).

Of course, hackers and phone modification junkies make up a small contingent of total phone purchases on the market. Cyanogen’s estimated user base floats somewhere in the 500,000 range. According to Android product management director Hugo Barra, the company has activated over 100 million Android devices since the platform’s launch. So catering to the modding community isn’t a straightforward play for marketshare by the manufacturers.

It will help, however, to silence the vocal minority of users upset with receiving locked down phones. After Motorola’s Atrix was released with a locked bootloader, modders started an online campaign against the company’s locked-down policy, often bombarding Moto’s Facebook page with less-than-flattering comments.

If nothing else, Samsung’s actions may bolster support from the developer community who in turn can influence others to buy the company’s phones.

Samsung did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plan seems to be working on at least one of the developers who received a free phone.

“You will not hear me bad-mouth Samsung again,” CyanogenMod team member Atinm tweeted on Monday.