xda is home to a lot of great developers. One of the more famous, Incubus, has agreed to have a sit down with TA to discuss his past, his work on Synergy, and his future. He is one of the defacto great developers in the Droid Incredible community, and to top it all off he’s a really great guy! Developers aren’t known for being men/women of many words, but rather letting their work speak for them. If you’ve ever wanted to delve a little deeper into the mind of a great dev here’s your chance. Interview after the break.
Real Name
Jeff Carrington
Age
28
Best way for people to contact you
incubus26jc@gmail.com
How old were you when you first got into programming?
25
What was your first Android phone?
Technically, the Droid Incredible is my first actual Android phone if you don’t include the Htc Vogue that was originally a Windows Mobile phone turned Android.
How did you hear about/get involved with xda?
I’ve always been a photoshop fan and I think i was looking for ways to modify/theme my Vogue with Windows Mobile. I Started gettting into serious theming at that point.
Made some themes and mods for touchflow 2d etc…
When/ How did you decide to develop for Android?
When the vogue was able to boot Android from the sdcard, that is when i used Android for the first time. Myns Warm Donut (Android 1.6). Eventually Android was able to flash via nand and that is when the Android scene on that phone really took off. The Vogue had some very smart developers including dzo (the master kernel developer) who started Android on the Vogue, vilord, Myn, jamezelle, mssmison and zenulator just to name a few. Myn was the one taught me just about everything I know. His positive attitude and encouragement was the reason I fell in love with Android rom developing. I started theming for his rom first and recieved a pretty good response from him. I also developed a pretty good reputation for theming. Then one day I was asked if I wanted to take over a rom from mssmison who was moving on to a better phone. I reluctantly said yes not really knowing what I was getting into. I’ve been hooked ever since.
What was the first ROM you ever developed?
The first rom i ever developed was for the Vogue and I believe it was a Cyanogen 5 rom. I did a Hero Sense rom around the same time. I ended up doing 5 or 6 roms before I left the vogue scene.
What are your thoughts on it now?
My first rom? Well, It’s not my best work. Lets just say that. If I only knew then what I know today. Although, a couple years from now I might be saying that about my work today.
Why did you choose your name to be Incubus26jc. Is there a special meaning to that?
Yes, Incubus is and always has been my favorite band. They are the best.
Synergy questions
1) How did you get involved in Team Synergy, and what were your initial thoughts about it?
Myn and I have been working on roms together since the vogue days. So when he moved on to the evo I was heart broken. The vogue was a sprint/verizon phone. The evo was just a sprint phone. I had to use verizon. Then one day I found out that the Incredible basically had the same internal hardware so developing with him again wasn’t such a long shot. So not long after getting my feet wet with the Incredible, I was working on Warm TwoPointTwo with myn. We made the rom compatible with both phones. Same with Warm Z. Naturally when it was time to develope Synergy, nothing had changed.
2) The Evo has a MUCH bigger community for devs to work with in terms of people willing to test, community mods, and things of that nature when compared to the DInc and the My Touch. How did you guys work that out? (ie: was a lot of the testing done on one device and the ROM essentially ported?)
Your right about that, the Evo community is much larger than that of the Incredible. But, these roms have been designed for both phones from the start. Myn is able to do more private testing than myself. Because his fanbase is large enough to where his private users probably out number my public users. I have to do more public testing if I want my rom tested thoroughly. The Mytouch4g is a very recent idea as Rafyvitto came to us and said he had it ported to his phone. We said we would be honored for him to join the team and further the use of Synergy.
3) Synergy is in RC1 right now. A lot of the devs working on it are notorious for not letting something leave “beta” until they’re perfect. Is this different from your usual method?
Myn, Virus and the others are all perfectionists like myself. That’s why we formed this team. We wanted and still want the most stable, perfect Sense 2.1/3.0 base we could get. Virus deserves alot of credit as he is always striving for the latest and greatest that he can get his hands on. He has been the heart and soul of synergy. Not to take anything away form the rest of the crew. Djzager, Joelz9614 and WoZZeR have been a vital part of this project as well.
4) Speaking of that, do you see another release candidate next, or a full release?
RLS1 is due to come out any day now. We are all very anxious to get this out there. We are making very minor changes. Since we are so close to RLS1 we dont want to make any significant changes at this point. After RLS1 drops, I’m sure we will be right back at it for some bigger and better things.
5) How does Team Synergy split up it’s vast experience in developing? Do people have certain jobs? Or is an organized free for all? haha
Um… great question. I would say that we all have our strengths. Like the Warm roms, Synergy is setup much the same way. We have several repositories setup on google code including a base rom in one repository and then we have vendor repositories. The vendor repo’s are designed for device specific files. Files that make the rom work on that device. So that makes it easy for us to work together as a team and not step on each others toes. This also ensures that we all have the latest and greatest files that each other is working on. Its a great way to keep from overwriting each others work.
6) How many man hours do you think you guys have put into this great ROM?
Oh man, anther great question. Personally I spend 3 to 4 hours a night working on it since May 22nd.
If you times that by 7 then you have a ton of hours 
7) I know you’re biased, but in your honest opinion what is the best ROM for your device, the Droid Incredible?
Of course its mine
In all seriousness, The Skyraider Rom made by ihtfp69 is and always will be one of the most stable roms for the Incredible. He is very very talented. But if I had to choose a rom to use on my phone, it would probably be any aamikaam rom. He is an excellent evo dev and his roms are ported to the inc by newtoroot. The attention to detail that are in his roms is amazing.
8 ) What are your plans after Synergy’s finished?
Well if you must know, Myn djzager and I are going to get right to work on Warm TwoPointThree
I’m not going to throw that many surprises out right now but i will give you this: It may not be Sense 2.1
Random Shtuff
1) If you had to give a title or superlative to every dev on Team Synergy, what would it be?
I feel like im about to describe the ninja turtles or something.
Myn: A Very nice, well spoken, java master with exceptional developing skills. He is like no other.
Virus: A family first guy like myself. A very spontaneous person with mad skills.
Wozzer: A very experienced dev exspecially with Windows Mobile. Excellent skills with making scripts and optimizing. Amazingly nice guy.
DjZager: A very talented dev/themer. No one is more precise with making mods and theming then djzager.
Joelz9614: A somewhat new comer to android rom developing. But catches on very fast and is an essential part of the synergy project. Also, has the best Sense 3.0 rom on the incredible in my book.
Rafyvitto: A smart man who know alot about android. He has single handily ported the synergy rom to the Mytouch4G and folks over there in that community thank him very much for it.
Myself: A themer at heart. Speaking of which, I have a nice surprise for the community on RLS1 launch day I’m still learning everyday. It’s hard to put myself in the same category as some of these guys.
2) You’ve worked with Myn before porting his Roms to the Droid Incredible, is it different developing from scratch with him vs porting with some additions?
Not really, I’ve kinda been by his side from the beginning as I stated above. He is just a pleasure to be mentioned in the same sentence with to be honest.
3) Do you have a “next” phone in mind? Or are you waiting for something in the future to be announced?
I haven’t quite decided which carrier I’m going to go with as of yet. If I stay with Verizon , then the phone hasn’t been developed yet. If I go with Sprint, then probably the evo3 d as some of the synergy Dev’s have already purchased it.
4) The ROM has been released for about a week and a half, and it already nearly has 5,000 posts in the evo section and a crap ton of mods for it. Even in the Droid Incredible section the thread seems to be pretty busy. Were you surprised at how quickly the community picked up this ROM?
Kinda, I knew when we talked about what we wanted to achieve that we may have something special. But any rom that includes virus and myn is sure to be a special product. But I am surprised at the vast amount of mods from the community. They are a special group of people and always seem to out do themselves. Keep up the great work community and lets keep it up. Teach each other how to do what you do. It’s what xda is all about.
5) Myn and Virus has notoriously dedicated followers, and based on some research the other devs do as well. How has it been working with the other devs’ communities outside of yours?
I love it simply because the communities are so much larger than that of the incredible. Its great to see something that you had a hand in developing being used on other devices, let alone your device.
6) Team Synergy is being looked at as possibly the greatest collection of developers to assemble since Cyanogen, that’s quite a tall title considering how much they’ve done for Android. What do you think about that?
I don’t believe anyone will ever top the cyanogen team. I don’t even want to try to compare. Cyanogen is probably the best android developer to ever develop for the OS. But we appreciate the kind words
7) Anything you want to say to our readers and your followers?
Just that we want to thank you guys for being the greatest community anyone could ask for. You’re the reason that we keep doing what we do in our spare time. Thanks for reading this and thanks for trying our Rom. Watch out for more Warmness
Incubus
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Well there you have it folks, Team Synergy’s own Incubus. He spread the love, he hinted at goodies, and he definitely left us itching for more. Stay tuned! We’re nagging even more developers to sit down with us for a few minutes!