OnePlus One India variant to lose CyanogenMod support in February

Well, its difficult to explain this. Few days ago, CyanogenMod teamed up with Micromax to provide their operating system to Yu branded Android smartphones. But, what we didnt know is that as part of the deal, CyanogenMod gave ‘exclusive‘ rights to YU to build smartphones running CyanogenMod. As OnePlus One has been running CyanogenMod operating system since worldwide launch, due to the deal between CyanogenMod and YU, OnePlus may not be able to launch their phones with CM11 operating system. Carl did mention in the blogpost that they will go ahead with the launch with a non-production build (not sure which variant of Android they will use) and that the production ready build will only be available in February. Once the production build is ready, OnePlus will setup stalls in major locations based on units sold in the region to help users upgrade their phones to the production build. The new build will be based on Android 5.0 Lollipop and without any bloatware. This is a shocker for us and we didnt expect CyanogenMod to backstab OnePlus. We are expecting that the December 2nd launch will happen in India. This is going to be a nightmare for OnePlus but we do hope that they get out of this one unscathed.

Update: Apparently, Oneplue One will launch with CyanogenMod OS in India but OnePlus is on a fast track to replace the OS with in-house developed variant of Android, which will be ready by Febuary after which Oneplus and CyanogenMod will part ways.

Here is full blogpost from oneplus.net/blog:

This week, we announced that the OnePlus One will finally launch in India on December 2, 2014. This has been a long time coming both for our Indian fans, who have been incredibly patient, and also everyone behind the scenes who have been working towards this moment since June.

OnePlus and all of our partners, including Cyanogen, have put countless hours of work into making this launch a success. Just last month, on October 7, Cyanogen released the 38R OTA update which included SAR values inside phone settings to comply with Indian regulations. Therefore, it was surprising and disappointing to hear from Cyanogen on November 26 that they had granted exclusive rights in India over the Cyanogen system to another company. Prior to this, OnePlus and Cyanogen have successfully cooperated to release the OnePlus One or carry out commercial operations in 17 countries and regions (including India). It is truly unfortunate that a commitment we both made to our Indian users will now not be upheld.

The One will continue to be supported globally and receive frequent OTAs. In fact, the next update will pack some surprises with which we think you’ll be very happy. Cyanogen has unequivocally committed to continuing this global support and we look forward to working with them for another year on continuously improving our device. But today, we address our Indian users who may feel disappointed or deceived.

We can’t explain Cyanogen’s decision because we don’t fully understand it ourselves. But we can explain exactly how we’ll continue offering our fans in India an amazing user experience and support for this device.

OnePlus was founded not even a year ago and we have grown and evolved immeasurably since then. But our priorities have never wavered: our product and our users.

Over the past year, we’ve often reflected on ways to better serve both. Those reflections led us to start developing our own Android team, as we’ve previously announced. That team was put in place originally to build the software which would power our future devices. So, though it’s not what we originally planned, we have shifted engineering efforts to the OnePlus One upon hearing this news. According to our current estimations, we’ll be able to release our first community build to our Indian users next month and have a production-ready build in February.

Our system will be based on Lollipop, and will be built to be stable, fast, and lightweight. True to our original promise of putting user experience first, it will be bloatware-free and only carry the features important to our users. We appreciate the work that Google has put into Android, and we have no plans of departing from Material Design nor adding unnecessary customizations. We can’t wait to hear your feedback and to build it together with you. We will commit to at least two years of support for the OnePlus One, starting from the release of our first community build.

When our system reaches a production-grade build, we will identify where larger clusters of our users are, and set up stations where we’ll meet you face to face and help you flash your existing OnePlus One to the new system. Of course, we will also offer online instructions for those who prefer to flash their devices from the comfort of their homes.

As we fast approach the first anniversary of OnePlus, we’ve been looking back on the past year. Our experiences have made us think hard about what’s really important in life, what culture we want to build, and what legacy we want to leave behind. These are difficult questions that we’ll need more time on. But at the very least, we want to remind ourselves to think long term, while always doing good by our users, partners and employees.

We’re extremely excited and confident about the team we’re building for our future system. We want to hear your feedback during an Reddit AMAA we are planning to host on /r/Android on December 5. Thank you for accompanying us on our journey, and thank you for your support. See you there!

Never Settle.