OnePlus only made their first real statement about their India launch a couple of days back. In that, it was mentioned that the OnePlus One would launch on December 2nd, and would go on sale via Amazon India. The phone was supposed to come with CyanogenMod, as it does in other international markets besides China (where it comes with ColorOS). In fact, Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus had mentioned that the One would feature CyanogenMod when it does come to India. Unfortunately, it won’t be that way anymore.
OnePlus posted a blog titled ‘A letter to our Indian users’, where it was revealed that CyanogenMod Inc had gotten into a deal with another company (more on this later). The letter goes on to reveal how OnePlus planned to launch the One with CyanogenMod in India, and why it won’t. “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.” writes Pei.
CyanogenMod will NOT provide software updates to users of the OnePlus One in India
It is a shame that this is happening. The OnePlus One is a wonderful smartphone, but the makers of the phone have had more than their share of troubles in having the device get to users’ hands. Thankfully, OnePlus has an Android team in place already, which shall now shift its focus to the OnePlus One, instead of future OnePlus devices as originally planned. We reached out to Pei, and we were told that the company will ship the global version of the One to India.
As per my understanding, this means that there will initially be CyanogenMod on the One in India, which however shall not receive any OTA updates like its global counterparts.
Micromax’s ‘Yu’ to get exclusive CyanogenMod support in India
This comes to me as a shocker. Although OnePlus haven’t really been everyone’s favourites, thanks to their modus operandi, the company has really managed to rattle the smartphone market. The Micromax (Yu) press release states, “Cyanogen’s exclusive deal also means that Cyanogen OS will not support any other devices shipping in India with future updates including Lollipop”.
Coming to why this has happened: CyanogenMod Inc have signed a deal with Micromax’s new Yu brand, which prohibits CyanogenMod to offer any support to devices sold in India. This will include the OnePlus One next month onward, and hence there’ll be no CyanogenMod based Lollipop. However, OnePlus’ own ‘system’ will have a Lollipop build by February next year.