The first custom ROMs based upon Android 12 are already available

Although we’re not yet seeing the stable Android 12 update for Pixel hardware — or any other device for that matter — the first wave of custom ROMs is now already available for intrepid device tinkerers.

In under 72 hours since Google pushed Android 12 and its changes to AOSP, ROM developers have hit the ground running, and for selected hardware, you can now get a taste of the latest OS upgrade. What’s more impressive is that it’s not just a solitary build either, as two independent Android 12 ROMs have been shared over on XDA’s Forums and both appear to be fairly stable given how soon they have been released.

Having access to the publicly available Android 12 source code was always going to accelerate any ROM development, but it’s still impressive to see such builds arrive in super-quick fashion. XDA member abhishk987 has built a ROM for the Redmi K20 and Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro that is, overall, fairly clean and streamlined. It also includes a take on Dynamic Color courtesy of a solution from developer kdrag0n that adapts your device theme in a similar manner. As XDA notes, this is because the “Monet” theming system is not yet fully open-sourced but it may eventually arrive in a “full” form at some point.

Despite running in a fairly stable manner, it’s still not quite ready for your “main” or “daily” smartphone, with installation not advised in most cases. As is often the case with early-phase builds you might encounter issues that break the overall experience.

On top of this more direct Android 12 ROM for selected devices, another developer AndyYan has compiled a build that can be flashed on any Treble-compatible hardware. Project Treble is part of Google’s efforts to make Android a more modular system and so changes made here make it even easier to boot on most new hardware with an unlockable bootloader.

The difference is that Android 12 GSI builds are very simple, and as XDA puts it “barebones,” compared to a more fully featured ROM. It’s almost inevitable that we’ll see more features added, tweaked, and tuned over time as developers spend more time with Generic System Images (GSI) such as this. AndyYan has kindly created a repo for any framework base patches that will allow ROM maintainers to more easily port their own ROMs to Android 12.