Xda-developers

XDA-developers [Community of XDA developers for programming and modding of PDA Cellphone hybrids: http://www.xda-developers.com] is a community of over 800,000 users worldwide. Their main purpose is to discuss Windows Mobile Phones: PocketPC and Smart Phones. Xda-Developers happens to be the biggest unofficial support base for all Windows Mobile Devices. Controversial in nature, they are also the first place that mobile users come for information and ROM upgrades (unofficial third party vendors).

The community is a resource for certain PDA-phones, made by a firm called HTC in Taiwan. Their makers named them 'Wallaby', 'Himalaya', 'Blue Angel', 'Wizard' and 'TyTN', but almost nobody knows them by those names. The mobile provider O2 sells them under the brand-name 'XDA', and that's what we had in our hands first. They're also known as Qtek, MDA, SX-56, Hermes and many, many other names.

Since they develop software for it and also provide third party resources, they have been feeding the community and users worldwide support & services others fail to provide. There are over 50 "Cookers". Cookers are individuals or groups that begin custom coding their own "Images of the ROM". The Images of an official windows mobile device is perfectly legal, in fact there are other companies who do the same for Windows PC "Lite". The idea behind this is to offer users integrated solutions by adding or removing extra third party software in order to make the system suit the requirement of the user. Xda-Developers does all of this for free, and is the one of the few communities that stress the importance of Freedom in many senses.

Xda-Developers Community Site/Forum turns out with a ranking in the top 1000 Ranked web sites [Alexa Site Ranking: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/forum.xda-developers.com] in Cambodia (47), Pakistan (467), South Africa (617), Indonesia (706), Greece (842)and Malaysia (913). India, Thailand and Italy list the community in the top 2000 rankings, while USA, UK, Netherlands, Germany and Spain in the top 3000 web sites. Australia and China fit them in the top 3000's. This itself should draw a rough picture of how demanded the community has been and it's usefulness to the community. Their average traffic-rank puts them in the top 2000's.

Earlier in February 2007, Microsoft asked Xda-Developers to remove all ROM's created by OEM Manufacturers as reported by various sources including the E-Newspaper "The Inquirer" [The Inquirer: Microsoft stomps on XDA developers - By Tony Dennis: Friday, 16 February 2007, http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/02/16/microsoft-stomps-on-xda-developers] . As always a petition against this was signed with over 10,000 users. This petition was however put on the side, when Microsoft did not pursue their own custom images.Microsoft felt that custom Image's built based on the ROM's provided by Microsoft with their phones was fine, as the rom's worked only on their prepared devices and not others. Again, Windows Mobile OS does not have a serial-key and all phones that are Windows Mobile, will work using the same OS which made piracy impossible and concerns none.

CNET Asia [HTC and the case of the missing drivers: By John ChanJan 23, 2008:http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/handhelds/0,39001709,62036929,00.htm] , one of the leading technology news provider in the world suggested XDA-Developers to be a potential solution to problems with many Windows based mobile devices. In other mobile phone reviews, testers at CNET preferred using Xda-Developer's ROMs for their detailed reviews.

At the end of the day, the Xda-Developers community has created awareness, education and knowledge by sharing information in order to provide quality support for Windows Mobile Phones across the world.

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