Hello, I'm the "User Experience Admin" of XDA - Introductions

Hey all!
My real name is Brandon Miniman, and you might have seen me on YouTube back in the day in Pocketnow videos. I live outside of Philadelphia, PA, and live with my wife and three kids (two girls and a boy), plus my puggle dog Ava.
I've used phones since the days of Windows Mobile phones (long live the HTC HD2 and Moto Q!). I currently use a Galaxy S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 mini.
Today, I'm part of the core leadership team at XDA where I spend my time overseeing operations (which includes working with mods, portal writers, and our technical team). Lately, since the upgrade from vBulletin to XenForo, I've been spending a lot of time working on a plan to grow the XDA community and make it the best place in the world to talk about phones. It's a tall order, and it's a bit complicated, so if you have any ideas or want to help, I'm all ears. My title is "user experience admin" because I'm the go-to guy for making the experience better on the site for users. That also means you can yell at me if you don't like something
You can follow me on Twitter if you care to: @brandonminiman. My DM box is always open if you have any questions or concerns about the site, or if you just want to say hi

Cheers Brandon!

hi everyone, im new here.

XDA was best warm home for AOSP.
XDA I like this portal for AOSP.

Hi every body, average user of modded rom, I'm here becauseof some mistake ... as usual...

Okay, you welcome!

Related

Would love some XDA help in winning a competition on facebook!

Hey guys, im normally really not one for these kind of things at all, however due to a huge issue with a carbon monoxide leak at my new house i am currently completely broke and had to sell my blackberry storm (which was supposed to be a stop gap) to make some funds available until pay day at the end of jan
so i have entered a competition with t-mobile UK on their Facebook page and require votes to win an atrix
really would be hugely appreciated
link is below if you have a couple of minutes, if not then no worries and i hope you all here on XDA have a wonderful christmas and a very prosperous new year
http://bit.ly/u3i4w1
and below is my son getting into the chrimbo spirit, thats the photo thats been entered
many thanks again
and the voting is now....................open

Sharing my spare time skill with XDA besides development work [ENJOY]

Hi XDApeeps,
I've been a proud member and developer of XDA for some time now and decided to share something I do in my spare time other then ROM development with you all for your entertainment.
I'm a beatboxer and have been doing it for 6 years now. What first began with my friend showing me this amazing talent of other well known beatboxers on his MP3 player became a skill I also acquired over time. I am self taught, I did not have the aid of lessons, tutorials or friends that could beatbox to learn from; all accomplished and learnt purely from listening, much practise and a lot of dedication.
Anyway, rather then blabblering on you can find my very first youtube video below which I have just uploaded as my friends and family insisted I made this available for all to hear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2dyvoaWd44&context=C372e8b3ADOEgsToPDskIV074eMBmIPIN7aTG3XJFU
Hope you enjoy!
Best Regards,
ST1Cl<^^aN
Like like like .....

XDA's Interview with CyanogenMod Developer Ricardo Cerqueira

XDA did a little interview with Ricardo Cerqueira, the CM mantainer of our phone, as wel as the one who opened the first path for ICS on the o2x. He tells how he first got into developing android and joined CM, as well as how he became the mantainer of most LG devices. There are some trivia and interesting things for us to note, and I just thought that the interview should be posted on this section too as people might have missed it in the xda front page.
Thanks to MUSTANGTIM 49 for doing the review, and of course Ricardo Cerqueira for his awesome work mantaining our beloved phone, enjoy the read!
In Android, every device has its Kung Fu master and for
anything LG, this master is CyanogenMod developer
Ricardo Cerqueira , otherwise known as XDA Recognized
Developer aremcee and cm_arcee . I know this first hand as
I am a proud owner of the LG G2x, a device that was
Ricardo’s daily driver for some 10 months.
We recently had the chance to have some one-on-one
time with Ricardo. Here is your chance to meet the man
behind the myth.
XDA : How did you first get into Android development?
Ricardo: I got into Android out of… boredom. I’ve been
working in IT since the late 90s, and eventually got to a
position that implied more meetings and presentations
than doing actually fun stuff, so I needed something to
get my fix. Android was all the rage at the time (3-
something years ago), so it was an easy choice.
XDA : What was your first Android device?
Ricardo: My first Android device was… the emulator, I
seriously played around with it for months, actual
android hardware was harder to come by where I
live. My first actual physical device was from a small
spanish company named Geeksphone, the Geeksphone
One. Crappy little device even for its time, but an excellent
learning platform, and the company was incredibly
supportive.
XDA : You list Lisbon, Portugal as your home, have you
always lived there?
Ricardo: Tough question… Yes and no. Family is
portuguese, but migrated to Canada in the 70s. They
returned to Portugal when I was 5.
XDA : Who is the “real” Ricardo Cerqueira?
Ricardo: The real me is father of one, husband of another,
and I like to think “overall regular guy” when away from
a keyboard.
XDA : What are your hobbies?
Ricardo: CM is my main hobby. Outside that, strictly
non-tech stuff, mostly gardening
XDA : Let’s talk CyanogenMod, you’ve got to tell us, where’s
the secret ”Bat Cave”?
Ricardo: No secret bat-cave, not even a secret
handshake. There’s an IRC channel where all of us hang
out, and yeah, from almost all over the world, US, of
course. Canada, Argentina, UK, Portugal, Spain, France,
Germany…Australia and I’m sure I’m forgetting
people, not to mention the translators, every continent
and a huge number of countries are represented from
that direction.
XDA : How does one become a member of the fabled
CyanogenMod team?
Ricardo: CM grows mostly from external contributors
that end up joining the party; the most frequent case is
people contributing support for new devices, but there are
also cases of people who submit so much stuff we just end
up asking them if they want to do it from the inside.
XDA: What makes up the majority of your duties at
CyanogenMod?
Ricardo: I do a bit of everything for CM, from
maintaining devices to reviewing code submissions. A lot
can be said to describe it, but boring is something it is not
XDA : How long have you been with CyanogenMod?
Ricardo: Hmm… let me check, since oct 2010, 20 months,
give or take.
XDA : What is the love affair between you and LG?
Ricardo: I do mostly LG devices because of the 2X,
actually. I just had to buy that dual-core goodness,
bought it, got CM on it, and then happened to meet an LG
guy at a conference; after nagging him about some of the
most annoying issues I had found in it, I was surprised
when LG called back.
XDA : Really? How did that go?
Ricardo: We had a nice, long conversation about what
and who CM was, they asked how they could help, so I
just threw my xmas list at them… and got a bunch of
“OK”s in return. LG has provided us with almost every
device they did since then, mostly to me, as well as a feel-
free-to-ask support channel if necessary. It has worked
out pretty well so far.
XDA : What has been your toughest project to date?
Ricardo: Most challenging project in CM… The starDOPs
(p990/p999). There were so many little nuts to crack, so
many tiny incompatibilities, that it took much longer
than usual to get everything that mattered working. For
that same reason, it’s also been my favorite. I love puzzles
XDA : I remember the morning you released “self-kang1″ for
the P990/P999.
Ricardo: True. I regret that decision, though.
XDA : Why?
Ricardo: Because it opened a can of worms that can’t be
closed again. Getting it to work needed some very ugly
workarounds that directly go against Google’s
compatibility document for ICS. An app developer
targeting ICS as a minimal version for his apps has the
right to expect some functionality to be guaranteed on a
device that claims to be ICS, that wasn’t (and isn’t) true
for ICS builds with these hacks. That’s one the main
reasons CM9 does not officially include a bunch of devices
that are “working.”
XDA : Well, you said it yourself, they were and are “hacks”.
Ricardo: Yes, and some users understand that, but a lot
don’t, and they’ll submit error reports on those apps, or
they’ll rate it badly at the Play store. This is not a
hypothetical scenario, it has happened whether we like it
or not, asked for it or not, CM’s userbase is large enough
to matter, even if you don’t count derivatives. We have a
responsibility not to cause that kind of grief to app
developers and we did. With all the mostly bull**** talk
about fragmentation, we actively contributed to a break
in the platform, no matter how small. That’s not a good
thing :X People SHOULD know these builds contain
hacks, but you’ve surely realized by now that they don’t
Thank you Ricardo for this interview. Also, on behalf of XDA
and myself, thank you to the entire CyanogenMod team for
all your hours of work and dedication.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Original post: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/interview-with-cyanogenmod-developer-ricardo-cerqueira/
PS: Sorry if the format is a little bit messy, I'm posting this from a tablet. Will get things tidier when I get to a PC.
How can I miss this interview?
He answered it like a bloody genius!
Thanks for pointing out mate salam

Calling LOS ANGELES Android Fans

Hey folks,
Long time user (and prior to that, long time lurker) on these forums - but today, I'm posting with a random, unusual request.
I'm trying to find Android fans in Los Angeles who may be available to help me with a little TV filming this coming Monday (26th June).
Long story short - my day job is as a TV reporter in Los Angeles.. I work for a global news channel called CGTN America (we broadcast out of Washington DC, Beijing and Nairobi to around about 1.2 billion homes worldwide.. including in the US on cable and satellite, though most of our viewers tend to come internationally)..
Since I'm a huge tech-head, I'm filming a story to go out later this week on ten years of the iPhone. But I want to make it different. What often happens with these stories is some networks get reporters who know nothing about technology to do them, and you end up with something that is just saying 'the iPhone is the most amazing device ever invented.'
Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on, it is an amazing device. And it did have a revolutionary impact. But there is so much to the story other than that.
One of the angles I really want to explore is the battle between iOS and Android. The way that the iPhone almost set the lines for a war. You see it on forums like this and XDA and Apple-related forums - people trying to outdo each other.. and people getting really irate as they nail their colors to the mast of their OS of choice.
I wondered if there may be some Android fans in the LA area who I could meet up with on Monday, if we can arrange a convenient time and we film a little sequence (details of which, I'm still to work out in my head) but talking about the iOS vs Android wars. This may be just Android users or it may an Android user and an iPhone user both debating what's best about their relevant OS.
It's still a germ of an idea. But I wanted to throw it out there and hope it gets seen over the weekend.
I'm gonna post this over on Android Central as well to try to maximize the number of people who see it and also on the Samsung Forum here. The reason for the double post is that in my experience, the real ire is often between Samsung and Apple fans (reflecting the companies, almost) and so there may be people in that board that this really appeals to..
Anyway, please do reply to me on here, or via DM, or via twitter @phillavelle.
Thanks for looking and have a great day!
Phil

It's been a long time....

Hello XDA, it's been a long time since I was truly active in these or any forums because life and reality provided an unintended distraction and then the pandemic. I find myself with a bit more time where I need a necessary diversion from reality and this forum has always provided this nerd with a world-wide community of nerds who really and truly know their ****. I have social networking friends that I follow, that I met through here and other technology forums that I have been friends with now for almost twenty years. I'm sure that how we met is irrelevant to many of them since we interact more about our day to day lives then the nerding out we did here in the forums. See, as a nerd, making real world friends was always difficult, but here, at XDA with my G1000 from Hitachi, one of the first-ever smart-phone, with a keyboard and a screen running Windows Mobile. I came here looking for a way to back-up my sms and call log to Microsoft Outlook and some genius had figured out a way to do it. I then had three different HTC Windows Mobile devices and XDA let me do amazing things with them.
Then, because I got suckered in to Sprint!, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy SII Touch or something ridiculous like that and it had so many issues out if the box but 2ss an amazing device. XDA was like High School and this is where you went from teen hacker wannabe to legit 1337 skills by rooting and then installing custom roms. The addiction to that thrill of knowing that a mistake, zigging when you're supposed to zag or skipping a step, rushing and missing something could spell disaster. I dropped a phone while installing a rom and the device boot-looped hard. Not to worry, XDA was here and someone else had done something similar, there was an entire forum thread devoted to all the people who had face-planted the rooting, rom or other process and lobotomized their Android device.
I still occasionally peruse the forums, lurking and liking and once in a while, replying. I just wanted to stop by and thank you for what seems like 17 or 18 years if amazing things. By you, I mean the people who run the forums behind the scenes at all levels and the moderators that keep the law and order necessary to thrive and function and you the users who's knowledge and other contributions are why we are here in these forums, from the creators to their guinea pigs to every other lurker like me. Thanks.
Blu3Fr0g said:
Hello XDA, it's been a long time since I was truly active in these or any forums because life and reality provided an unintended distraction and then the pandemic. I find myself with a bit more time where I need a necessary diversion from reality and this forum has always provided this nerd with a world-wide community of nerds who really and truly know their ****. I have social networking friends that I follow, that I met through here and other technology forums that I have been friends with now for almost twenty years. I'm sure that how we met is irrelevant to many of them since we interact more about our day to day lives then the nerding out we did here in the forums. See, as a nerd, making real world friends was always difficult, but here, at XDA with my G1000 from Hitachi, one of the first-ever smart-phone, with a keyboard and a screen running Windows Mobile. I came here looking for a way to back-up my sms and call log to Microsoft Outlook and some genius had figured out a way to do it. I then had three different HTC Windows Mobile devices and XDA let me do amazing things with them.
Then, because I got suckered in to Sprint!, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy SII Touch or something ridiculous like that and it had so many issues out if the box but 2ss an amazing device. XDA was like High School and this is where you went from teen hacker wannabe to legit 1337 skills by rooting and then installing custom roms. The addiction to that thrill of knowing that a mistake, zigging when you're supposed to zag or skipping a step, rushing and missing something could spell disaster. I dropped a phone while installing a rom and the device boot-looped hard. Not to worry, XDA was here and someone else had done something similar, there was an entire forum thread devoted to all the people who had face-planted the rooting, rom or other process and lobotomized their Android device.
I still occasionally peruse the forums, lurking and liking and once in a while, replying. I just wanted to stop by and thank you for what seems like 17 or 18 years if amazing things. By you, I mean the people who run the forums behind the scenes at all levels and the moderators that keep the law and order necessary to thrive and function and you the users who's knowledge and other contributions are why we are here in these forums, from the creators to their guinea pigs to every other lurker like me. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to see an old timer around!
HTC was my fav brand for many many years....
Hope to see ya around.
Cheers!

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