OnePlus announced earlier this week that it’ll be teaming up with Amazon to launch the OnePlus One in India starting December 2. However, the company today revealed that the One that’ll be sold in India will be a bit different than the models sold in other parts of the globe.
In a post on its official blog, OnePlus says that it’s disappointed to learn that Cyanogen Inc. has struck a deal with Micromax that’ll see the Micromax's Yu smartphones be the sole devices powered by CyanogenMod in India. The OnePlus One is powered by CyanogenMod in other parts of the globe, so what’ll OnePlus do in India? Use its own version of Android.
OnePlus explains that over the past year, it’s been building its own Android team to build software for its future devices. However, now that team is building support for the OnePlus One as well. OnePlus says that its version of Android will be based on Android 5.0 Lollipop, will be free of bloatware and will keep Google’s Material design language.
OnePlus estimates that it’ll release the first community build of its own flavor of Android to Indian users in December, with a production-ready version planned for February. OnePlus goes on to say that it’ll support the OnePlus One with updates for two years following the launch of its first community build. OnePlus will also post online instructions for folks that want to flash their device to the new software once a production-ready build is achieved.
With OnePlus’s promise to stick to a Material design-ified, bloatware-free version of Android 5.0, it’ll be interesting to see features OnePlus deems are ”important to its users” and adds to Android. With the praise that Android 5.0 and Material design have gotten, I’m sure that there are at least a few folks that’d be interested in a OnePlus One with near-stock Lollipop, similar to Motorola’s Moto X.
