No Exynos to worry about this time around
What software is your smartphone running? Since you’re on this site, that’s likely Android of some flavor, but the spectrum extends much further than Google’s official desserts. While most of us stick to releases provided by the manufacturers of our devices, we’ve also got the freedom to explore unofficial alternatives — custom ROMs cooked up by independent devs. This week we’re seeing Samsung get the ball rolling on the mod scene for its latest flagships, as the company begins releasing its kernel sources for the Galaxy S23 family.
Samsung has published the Linux kernel sources for S23 models SM-S91xB and SM-S91xU. Sadly, shortly after making those downloads available the site has hit some maintenance, but XDA confirms their presence prior to this temporary outage.
We’re not at all surprised to see Samsung being quick to make this code available, but it managed to outdo itself this time around, delivering this resource just one week after the S23 series hit retail. That’s a couple days faster than the turnaround we saw last year with the release of the S22 kernel sources. Of course, back then Samsung was juggling both Snapdragon and Exynos-powered S22 phones, and we’d have to imagine that its development efforts are much more streamlined now that the company’s all-in on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with the S23.
None of this is a guarantee we’ll be seeing cool hacks from independent devs, or even full-blown ROMs, in anything approaching the near future. But the ball is now in their court, at least — well, once Samsung’s open source repository is back up and running, anyway.
