Paranoid Android is pretty much over

Paranoid Android has long been considered one of the most popular custom ROMs available on Android. Unfortunately, it looks like the development team might be throwing in the towel sometime soon.

It’s no secret that the team has been slowing down as of late. After OnePlus hired a handful of key members from the Paranoid Android team to work on its new OxygenOS ROM back in February 2015, users running Paranoid on their devices quickly found out that future updates would be few and far between. The dev team did manage to push out Android 5.1 Lollipop to Nexus devices in July, though the team said the delay was largely due to the fact that they were missing the manpower they once had on their core team.

So what’s to come of the custom ROM? Following a brief post from Paranoid Android’s Andre Saddler on Google+ claiming that the ROM is, in fact, dead, we reached out to one of PA’s project leads, Matt Flaming, for comment. Although he didn’t have any official statement to share from the team, Flaming relayed to us that the remaining members at PA have become too busy with their lives to continue working on the project. You see, the dev team has always been extremely small, so when everyone seems to have more important things to work on it can be difficult to get work done. Some of the members are focusing on finishing up college and have other important things going on.

Flaming continues:

I cannot say officially that we are indeed dead, as I would love to see where 2016 brings us. I would love to wind down 2015 not worrying about it, and hopefully ‘get the band back together’ early next year. Maybe after everyone has had some time off they will realize how much they miss it. I, for one, will hold out hope on revitalizing the project at some point.

Flaming says he has no plans to put the kibosh on the distribution network, blog, website or anything else PA related in the near future.

It’s certainly sad to see Paranoid Android come to an end, if that ends up being the case in the future. The development team has become one of the most respected, detail oriented and talented teams in the custom ROM community, and we’re sure many folks out there won’t be extremely happy to hear this news.

Have you used Paranoid Android in the past, or do you still use it? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the custom ROM in the comment section below.