Menu
I read "custom ROM" and "customized firmware" all over the internet.
To my understanding ROM stands for Read Only Memory. Despite that I see links to files, that I suppose, are filesystem images, containing an operating system with preinstalled libraries and applications. What are these actually? Why do people refer to these as ROMs?
Also: cyanogen-mod's official description says: "[...] is [...] firmware distribution [...] increase [...] over Android-based ROMs [...] these versions of Android [...]". So they seem to use firmware, hardware component storing the firmware, and operating system interchageably. Do I see that right? Why is that?
860
According to one definition, firmware in Android serves as a bridge between the hardware and the operating system. The firmware on devices only contains the necessary instructions for the hardware to work with the operating system installed on the device.
“ROM”, as used by most people when talking about cellphones, is the phone's firmware, but in the industry at large, a ROM is a (usually one chip) block of read only memory (some types can be written in the field, others, called masked ROMs, are made with the firmware in them). ROM stands for Read Only Memory.
It was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software; thus the name firmware.
Firmware is typically stored in the flash ROM of a hardware device. While ROM is "read-only memory," flash ROM can be erased and rewritten because it is actually a type of flash memory. Firmware can be thought of as "semi-permanent" since it remains the same unless it is updated by a firmware updater.
Well, they refer to the firmware of the phone as ROM, because in theory you, as a normal user, can't alter the area where the firmware is (it's in the Read Only Memory). On older phone, this was true, it wasn't easy to alter a phone software without special equipment.
In nowadays, the firmware is not stored in real ROM, it's stored in the internal flash memory of the phone, which is not Read Only, so you can flash another firmware. As Farmor says, the 2 terms are interchangeable.
In general, people refer to modified firmwares as ROMs.
103
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
