The Paranoid Android ROM is one of the most popular ROMs out there and has given birth to some of the most popular custom ROM features like PIE and Halo. With Android 4.4 KitKat on the horizon, the Paranoid Android team has previewed their plans moving forwards in one neat Google Plus posting.

Instead of assigning devices for an individual developer to support and produce a ROM which is of lower quality, the entire team will focus on fewer devices in order to combine all of their skills and create “something truly awesome”.

That’s not to say that ports will no longer exist, just that the main team won’t be the ones creating the ports. There’s no list of which devices that will be officially supported just yet, but the team assures us that the next Nexus smartphone will definitely be one of them.

The next step is to “re-do Paranoid Android from scratch”, and ensure that all of the knowledge on the team is used and that features are polished, 100% stable and fast. The team also assures us that the new Paranoid Android will fall in line with the design guidelines set by Google.

Our goal is to stay closer to stock, things must be nice to look at, simple, uncluttered and easy to modify (like not having to sift through hundreds of system settings to add a silly toggle)
Paranoid Android

It’s clear that Paranoid Android wants to grow up and it’s probably being inspired by the recent commercialization of Cyanogen. The Paranoid Android team says that they’re working on an updater and possibly a ROM installer for beginners.

The team wants to attract “normal Android users” (a name change might be in order if they plan on doing that) who enjoy stock Android and will offer high-quality tutorials on how to flash Paranoid Android and offer more support overall.

I for one, am excited at the new developments coming from Paranoid Android, with a new redesign that his Holo-ness Matias Duarte would approve of and talk of higher quality ROMs. It seems as if the Android custom ROM community is really stepping up, now let’s hope that the OEMs take notice of this and produce some much more beautiful custom overlays (I’m looking at you Samsung and LG).

Do you like what you hear from the Paranoid Android team? Which custom ROM do you prefer?