A few days ago we announced that the release of the ICS build for the IdeaPad K1. What you won’t know that this would not have been possible if not for the collaborative efforts of the community, notably Khanning, aleafonthewind and also gmarkall, who also helped test, debug and improve on the ROM before the release.
We catch up with Khanning, or Kreg Hanning, who shares with us a little bit about himself and sheds some light as to what sparked his interest in Android development.
Serene: Hi Kreg. Thanks so much for your help. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do in real life.
Kreg: I'm currently working as a full time Technology Specialist for a university in Cambridge, MA.
Serene: Sounds like you have a lot on your plate – what do you do besides working on Android codes?
Kreg: Well, Android is a big one, along with other various software/hardware programming. When I'm not working on Android you can find me kayaking on the Charles, catching a Red Sox's game, or tearing something apart to put a microcontroller in it.
Serene: That’s amazing. So what got you started on working on the K1?
Kreg: The project started with a custom firmware many are familiar with called, Cyanogenmod 9. It's a modified version of Android 4.0 ICS. My (K1) build had basic functionality, but it had some large bugs that caused most people to stay away (No Camera, No HD Video Playback). At the time it was only me and another user named krook1 working in an IRC chat to try to figure out the remaining issues. We were able to figure out what the fixes were, but since Lenovo already made a commitment to an official ICS release, we couldn't justify investing the huge amount of time it would have taken to try it. Forward to today and we have an official ICS release from Lenovo. I now have been able to compile a fully functional AOSP ICS build that I'm about ready to release. Then onto Jellybean…
Serene: Were you surprised when the code was shared with you to work on?
Kreg: It was nice to have the kernel source provided quickly after the release. A lot of Android devices are released without proper kernel source codes, which is a clear violation of its licensing agreement. I believe the open source nature of Android has played a fairly substantial role in its success, and it's amazing to see companies like Lenovo begin to reach out to the open source community. I was also very pleased with Lenovo's decision to release a completely "Vanilla" Android build.
Serene: As are many people, we hope. That said, thanks so much for working on this! Here’s to many more chances for collaboration!
Have a question about ICS? Or about our tablets in general? Join in our discussion here.
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