Early (early early) this morning, Steve Kondick (Cyanogen) announced that the immensely popular CyanogenMod had reached 1 million unique downloads! CyanogenMod is just one of many custom firmwares based on the open-source Android operating system. The CyanogenMod Team consists of numerous devout developers and members who work hard to bring support and features to as many devices as humanly possible. They have extended the life of devices well beyond the realm of official support and have freed us from the chains of carrier induced crap. Custom Android firmware and the ability to have it, is just one of the many advantages of an open-source project such as Android.

Google’s goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to present a more unified and distinguishable platform UI from here on out. They’ve been hard at work trying to figure out ways to maintain their “open” approach, while also maintaining some sort of consistency. They want developers to know that they have worked hard on creating Ice Cream Sandwich UI with “the users’ best interests in mind,” and encourage them to apply and adapt these methods when developing for Android. To help guide developers on how to create a complimenting application for Android, they have opened up a new site called “Android Design.”

Sprint has announced a minor maintenance update for the HTC EVO 3D. Software update 2.17.651.5 should be available starting today for anyone who wishes to manually pull it up, otherwise an OTA should begin rolling out on Jan 17. To manually check for the update, simply hit Menu > Settings > System updates > HTC software update > Check now. This update is very minor and includes:

Although Gingerbread has been available for over a year now, the Samsung Captivate hasn’t seen the update until today (who says Samsung doesn’t update their devices). That’s right, while most people are wondering when Ice Cream Sandwich is going to be ready for their device, there are still some people out there just hoping for Gingerbread. Not an optimal update schedule for most, but I guess it’s better late than never, right?

This will probably be the best news to come out of CES for ASUS Transformer Prime owners. During the NVIDIA CES event, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) would be made available tonight, and is in fact rolling out now. I’m sure you’ll all be up checking your device for the rest of the night so I won’t bother you and your precious anymore than I have to. Cheers!