... and rises from the ashes

... Phoenix Recovery

So some of you have no doubt heard that I've begun work on a new recovery. And when I say a new recovery, I don't mean another ClockworkMod or Amon_RA or TWRP. I mean a new recovery. From scratch. Yes, I'll be importing in Google's edify engine, since I obviously have to support edify. But even that will be tweaked to use the new engine's interfaces. So I've started with one of the most powerful yet least used tools in a software architects arsenal... A notebook. Not a laptop or a mobile PC, but a bunch of paper bound together with a metal spiral. And a pencil. I've gots pages of interface designs, flow diagrams, feature requirements, etc. And I'm not yet ready to touch the computer.

I've learned something important in the blog comments and the twitter responses. I was doing TWRP for the wrong reason. And because of that, it didn't live up to my expectations. In my opinion, TWRP 2 was kind of a failure. And I finally understand why. I had the wrong motivation. I wanted to revolutionize recovery. But it doesn't. The only device it was revolutionary for is the Kindle Fire.

So what is my new motivation? Money, of course. I want to sell a product. I want to see you all a recovery engine. Now many of you are probably thinking nobody would pay for recovery. And that's exactly why money is the motivation. If I had to put a price tag on TWRP 2, I don't believe many people would actually pay for it. It's got some bugs, support is sporadic, doesn't have an android app, not a product I'd put my money out for.

So if I want you to give me your money, I need to offer you something you can't get for free. I need to be not just better, but better enough that you'd pay for the features and functionality it provides. If I can make a recovery system that is so good, you'd pay me $5 for a copy, (price has no reflection on plans, just throwing out a number), then I've made a better product. Nobody is going to pay me to add a startup animation to an otherwise run-of-the-mill recovery.

So it's back to my notebook for me. I've got a recovery engine to design.