CyanogenMod 9 arrives on Samsung Galaxy S3

While many people are undoubtedly content with indulging in all the onboard joys that Samsung have kitted out their Galaxy S3s with, developers in the dark underbelly of the smartphone world have been working on an alternative to the default Android OS.

Developed by XDA developers, CyanogenMod has been around for some time now, with versions coming out that were based on Gingerbread, Honeycomb, and now Ice Cream Sandwich. CyanogenMod is more than just a superficial UI tweak though. It’s a whole new build of Android, making it even more tweakable.

Among the features on CM are the ability to overclock and underclock your phone, tweaking phone software, and supposedly faster phone functioning. Note that you have to root your phone to install CyanogenMod.

There are some downsides to CM as well though. The process of rooting your phone and trying out Beta versions of the Mod could brick the software on your phone, there is currently no support for the S3′s onboard radio, and the LED flash function on the camera hasn’t yet taken too kindly to it.

So it might be worth waiting if you’re inclined to get more moddy and tweaky with your S3. Safe to say that the average but over-curious phone user could well get their fingers burned.