OnePlus, the company behind the uber-budget high-end OnePlus One smartphone, has suffered a betrayal by Cyanogen Inc.
Cyanogen produce CyanogenMod, a popular Android ROM and the mainstay of OnePlus One’s operating system.
Unfortunately Cyanogen has signed an exclusivity deal over in India – and not with OnePlus – days before the firm was due to launch its One smartphone in the country.
Since then, OnePlus has made a formal apology to its expectant fans in India, with the firm’s Global Director Carl Pei writing: “It is truly unfortunate that a commitment we both made to our Indian users will now not be upheld.”
It’s especially interesting because even the OnePlus team doesn’t seem too sure why Cyanogen decided to give them the boot in India.
“We can’t explain Cyanogen’s decision because we don’t fully understand it ourselves,” continued Pei.
“But we can explain exactly how we’ll continue offering our fans in India an amazing user experience and support for this device.”
Pei then used the occasion to announce it would be developing its own operating system ROM based on Android Lollipop, replacing Cyanogen’s build.
The director estimated the first community build would go live in India starting next month, with a production-ready build set to be up by February next year.
“Our system will be based on Lollipop, and will be built to be stable, fast, and lightweight,” explained Pei.
“True to our original promise of putting user experience first, it will be bloatware-free and only carry the features important to our users.”
Pei assured OnePlus fans that the firm would stick with Google’s ‘material design’ aesthetic, and would be offering a face-to-face service to help user flash existing OnePlus One devices to the new system.
