Cyanogenmod 7 for Nexus One: a must-have

The Nexus One is now almost 2 years old, making it a dinosaur in mobile phone land. It's main limitation is the limited amount of RAM available. Over time, the preinstalled Google Apps have grown so large that it is almost impossible to install anything else. A few weeks ago I even had to uninstall the Flash player because I kept getting 'memory full' warnings.

The Cyanogenmod solves this problem. The first solution is that the build is much smaller than the official firmware. The way it partitions the available RAM leaves a lot more room for applications. The second solution is that by rooting your phone (through the installation of Cyanogenmod) you enable the installation of S2E. This application is available in the Android Market and allows you to use a separate partition on the SD card as an extension to the internal memory. The main reason memory is a problem on these early Android devices is that it is not possible to move or install system applications to the SD card. System applications are not only Gmail, Calendar and contacts, but also Google Maps, Google Plus and Flash player are large applications that can't be moved to the SD card. The S2E application solved this.
To install the firmware I followed the guide at http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Nexus_One:_Full_Update_Guide. There are 2 things that should be added to this guide:
- You should first install the Java SE SDK, then the Android SDK and then the fastboot tool
- After installing the Android SDK, you need to start the program SDK manager in C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk and install the additional "platform-tools", which creates the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools
- The fastboot.exe file shoudl be installed in this directory and you should run it from this directory.
If you don't follow the above steps before installing fastboot, it will complain about a missing dll AdbWinApi.dll. (note: I added these steps in the Wiki, so hopefully they remain there)
Another thing that didn't work for me is booting in the ClockWorkMod Recovery. I tried the Amon_Ra Recovery instead and this worked flawlessly.

The result
I'm very happy that I installed this Cyanogenmod

• The phone is much faster now. The UI is just as snappy as it was the first day I had the phone.
• There is loads of memory available for applications. I didn't even need the extra S2E partition to move the system apps to SD, which means they still can run form the faster internal memory.
• There is a lot more flexibility. I love features like being able to control what the trackball alerting light does. Also the ability to configure the SD card as the default installation location for new apps is great. And there's much more. 
• There is aven a FM radio. The hardware was sitting unused in the N1 all of this time and Cyanogen now unlocks this!

Maybe in a few weeks we can even switch to Ice Cream Sandwich, the newest version of Android. Although this will not be released for the Nexus One by Google, a team of developers on XDA Developers is working on a build for the N1. You can follow their progress here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1366897