If you love the powerful hardware, excellent screen, and beautiful design of the HTC One X, but would prefer your smartphone have a Sense-free, stock Android experience, the hacking community has answered your call. TripNRaVeR of the TripNDroid Mobile Engineering team has just posted a version of Cyanogenmod 9 for the One X, a ROM that'll bring an experience very similar to stock Android 4.0 to HTC's flagship device. While this hasn't been officially released through the Cyanogenmod site, the ROM was built using the open-source Cyanogenmod 9 files; currently, most of the hardware features are intact. The camera and Wi-Fi hotspot aren't working properly right now, and it takes a while for the phone's 3G connection to lock in initially. Mobile data, calls, and SMS all appear to be working, though there's no mention of how Google Play or third-party apps are working right now.

In keeping with the custom nature of Cyanogenmod, the developer has remapped the HTC One X's hardware buttons — the multitasking button now works as the Android "menu" function. This removes the annoying black bar at the bottom of the One X screen that previously popped up to hold the menu soft button. To get to the multitasking menu, users can just hold down on the home button. Unfortunately, this release only supports the Tegra 3 version of the One X; if you have a dual-core, LTE-equipped device, you're out of luck for now. Of course, now that this is out in the wild, we expect it won't be too long before a version compatible with AT&T's flavor of the device is released. Lastly, we have to offer the requisite warning to inexperienced users — if you're unfamiliar with installing custom versions of Android such as this, you should be prepared for the possibility of your phone not working exactly as you're used to.

Thanks, Anonymous!