Cyanogen Ditches OnePlus in Favour of Micromax in India
While Indian smartphone lovers were anticipating the launch of the ‘Flagship Killer’, OnePlus has dropped a bomb that was not expected by anyone. The company has shared some disappointing news on its official blog. Well, Cyanogen had granted exclusive rights in India over the Cyanogen system to another company.
That means, the flagship killer will be reaching the country with the popular Cyanogen OS onboard for now. However, it won’t be getting any official support or future updates. The company also added that the One will continue to be supported globally and receive frequent OTAs.
The reason for this disappointment is a recent agreement between Cyanogen and homegrown smartphone maker Micromax, through which the latter has exclusive rights to offer devices with the custom platform in India. So, while the company has no other choice than to bring the OnePlus One to the country with the CM11S OS inside, it’ll be developing its own firmware as a replacement in the future.
The company estimated that they will be able to release our first community build to Indian users next month and have a production-ready build in February. The system will be based on Lollipop, the company said, and will be built to be stable, fast, and lightweight. The smartphone manufacturer also revealed that it will be bloatware-free and will only carry the features important to users. It further stated that they don’t have any intention to iterate Google’s Material design and stock Android experience.
Cyanogen OS was one of the main reason a lot of people wanted to get their hands on the OnePlus One. The fact that Cyanogen saves users from the trouble of rooting, unlocking the bootloader and flashing a new ROM as well as assures them that the phone will be supported in the long run, have made it popular and it has built quite a following in recent years.
As we reported earlier, OnePlus One is going to launch on 2nd December (tomorrow) in India and will be sold exclusively through Amazon.in. The device is expected to be priced around Rs. 24,990 for 64 GB and Rs. 19,990 for 16 GB variant.
