OnePlus One receives first taste of Lollipop, sans CyanogenMod

The smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has formed its own team of software engineers, due to restions it faced in selling its flagship device in India, and its strained relationship with its software provider Cyanogen. Its first attempt at building its own software comes in the form of an alpha build of Lollipop for the OnePlus One.

The Lollipop ROM is still in early stages of development, but is now available for those brave enough to try it out. The ROM is reportedly very close to stock AOSP.

The official announcement instructs OnePlus One owners to perform a complete wipe of their device before flash the new ROM in the TWRP custom recovery. The GApps zip file (a packaged version of Google's apps and backend software, like the Play Store and Gmail) has also been provided.

Given that this is an alpha ROM, users would likely have to perform another complete wipe when an update arrives. The final version may arrive as an OTA (over-the-air) update and should offer simpler instructions.

While it's safe to assume that this new and unnamed Lollipop ROM is what Indian users will be seeing in a few weeks or months, it's unclear whether OnePlus will switch phones outside of India to its own ROM. Cyanogen Inc.'s original software supply agreement may compel them to develop new software for a set amount of time.

In any case, its safe to assume that the OnePlus One's successor will likely use the company's new in house software instead of a CyanogenMod build solution.



source - OnePlus | AndroidPolice