Cyanogen Inc. to OnePlus: We’re done


oneplus one no cyanogen branding

What started as a truly promising project in December of 2013 is dying an unexpected death, or so it appears. The OnePlus One may have been endlessly criticized for being more hype than substance, but I’m sure many would agree, the One was one of the best phones at the time of its launch, and until a few good months after that.

The fact that the OnePlus One came with the Cyanogen OS undoubtedly was one of the most compelling features of the device. The market had hordes of powerful phones that came OEM skinned ROMs, and offered next to nothing when customizability was the focus.

oneplus-cyanogen-micromax

Needless to say, the OnePlus One was a smashing hit. It turns out the company itself did not see the demand coming; that’s something that added to the misery of OnePlus back when it had to keep convincing potential buyers about ‘the next batch of OnePlus Ones’ that was about to be ready for shipment.

The phone got so popular that OnePlus almost didn’t have to spend cash on marketing, which was, in a way, self sustaining. In fact, OnePlus officials famously said once that they started out with a total marketing budget of just $299.

Gizchina News of the week


Without Cyanogen, OnePlus would have sold like one device in international markets,Kirt McMaster

Come April 2015 (incidentally, this is just a little since the OnePlus One’s first anniversary), and we’ve come to know that OnePlus and Cyanogen Inc. won’t really be working together anymore. If you’re a follower of general tech, you would know that the two young companies haven’t shared the best relationship in the past. In fact, it got to the point of ugly once, when an email thread between officials of the two companies was made public thanks to the legal battle in India.

oppo n1 cyangenmod

Steve Kondik aka Cyanogen

“Without Cyanogen, OnePlus would have sold like one device in international markets,” is what Kirk McMaster (CEO, Cyanogen) had to add about the issue. “Essentially they built their brand on the back of Cyanogen,” he goes on. Cyanogen aka Steve Kondik himself took a rather subtle route saying “Two new companies are trying to do crazy stuff, a lot of people collide.”

It’s unfortunate that it has come down to this. What OnePlus and Cyanogen did was truly remarkable, and will set the tone for a lot of forthcoming partnerships.

About the future, Cyanogen added that the company would be looking to work with companies “that can scale much quicker”. OnePlus, on the other hand, is currently working on the OnePlus Two launch. We wish both companies luck!

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24 Comments

  1. Jay
    April 28, 2015

    Selling one device in international markets? Now, CM have been going overboard for a long time, won’t take longer to drown.

    • Cuerex
      April 28, 2015

      i think in selling he means the actual profit and i could be kind of true

    • David Košič
      April 28, 2015

      Maybe but if are being honest it was the combination of the price and Cyanogen that really drove westerns to it. I don’t think that the next model will have a such high demand if there is no Cyanogenmod on it.

      • Xalis
        April 28, 2015

        I couldn’t careless about CM I just wanted a $700 brand phone but for half of the price.

        • balcobomber25
          April 28, 2015

          You still can get that from Meizu, Xiaomi and several others.

      • balcobomber25
        April 28, 2015

        I agree with you on this, a lot of people I know who bought it, bought is specifically for CM. The specs were the same as most other Chinese flagships what set it apart was CM.

        • Xiaolu
          April 29, 2015

          Same here, I was one of the ones buying. You can understand how I feel now, CM12 still didn’t hit my unit. I’m about to install Resurrection Remix ROM… but it’s all troublesome: I bought the OPO because I wanted customization out of the box, and now I need to spend time doing “dirty work”. They are done for me too, OnePlus.

          • balcobomber25
            April 29, 2015

            Personally I am not a fan of CM but a lot of my friends are and the decision between a Xiaomi, Meizu or OPO came down to one having CM out of the box.

  2. david
    April 28, 2015

    Screw CM, long live OPO. There is mokee rom which is as good as CM and not held “private”. CM didn’t respect community and yet they own everythin to it.

    • balcobomber25
      April 28, 2015

      “CM didn’t respect community and yet they owe everything to it.” One could say the same thing about OPO, their respect for the community was laughable at best with their constant PR flops and invite system.

  3. Adam Irvine
    April 28, 2015

    Does this mean no more support for the OnePlus One from Cyanogen though? As I was kinda hoping we’d see Android 5.1 (in the firm of cm12.1s?) on it before they walk away from it all..?

  4. Poison
    April 28, 2015

    Also without the money that OP payed for the ROM cyanogen wouldn t be a company

    • balcobomber25
      April 28, 2015

      CM has been around since 2009, their success has little to do with OPO. Their funding in large part has come from venture capitalists. In fact you could say the opposite without CM, OPO never would have had the success they did.

      • Joe mont
        April 28, 2015

        They sold out to Microsoft and are now implementing privacy adverse “functionality”. I doubt Opo/Oneplus gave them very much money at all for their rom, it was likely a pittance.

        • bojan radovanovic
          April 29, 2015

          privacy adverse “functionality”!?

          dude…you know all OS is all about it, just to colect your data…so they could…send you add’s.
          ALL of them

  5. Oz
    April 28, 2015

    Get Miui ROM into One+. CM without the public inputs and support will be doomed. One+ does make excellent class phones. Oxy ROM looks very promising.

  6. balcobomber25
    April 28, 2015

    Buy a Xiaomi instead!

  7. April 29, 2015

    Such a baseless article. The support for opo ends means the opo will not be shipped with cyanogen. like how nexus is not shipping with cyanogen but cyanogenmod will support opo till it lasts. Installing custom rom in opo is a cakewalk. check xda to see how many of the developers were working on opo. ATM people using custom rom like slimrom miui etc are more than people using cyanogenmod. Check out the number of kernals available for opo, amazing. OPO is still a capable phone and ever will be. hereafter opo will be shipped with oxygen and then afterwards users can do whatever to the phone. It wont void the warranty. Peace.

  8. Suskind
    April 29, 2015

    Iocean X9 start PRE with 5.0” FHD display, 6.5mm thickness, metal frame, double glass, 3GB RAM, dual 4G-LTE, and Sony IMX214 , is the price $249.99 high?
    http://www.iocean.cc

    • aaa
      April 29, 2015

      that battery? it wouldn’ last more than 12hrs of regular use. its crazy.

  9. yalok
    April 29, 2015

    CyanogenOS is not needed for CyanogenMod (which is an opensource project supported by enthusiasts from all the world) to survive. There will still be CyanogenMod builds for OPO for the years to come.

  10. Avinash kumar
    April 29, 2015

    I have an OPO still on cm 11s and its good,stable and a remarkable device .But yeah it lacks the finish in some things and all reviews praise the hardware ,excellent sustained performance and battery life ;more than cyanogenmod 11s.

    “Unfortunately, these issues with the camera UI can be seen in the software experience as a whole. There is a strong and consistent focus on presenting as many options and features as possible to the detriment of user friendliness. While I appreciate the extent of customization available throughout the OS, it feels as if it’s still very much the same XDA ROM with a serious lack of polish. I suspect that this has little to do with OnePlus though, as Cyanogen is the one that seems to be driving UI decisions more than anything. Regardless of where the fault lies, it’s critical for these issues to be resolved for the OnePlus Two.”-Anandtech

  11. April 29, 2015

    a lot of discussion about the politics, but how about some concrete answers about the practical aspects:

    1) What about the 3 year promise of OS updates for the OnePlus?
    2) Are we getting a 5.1 (12.1) update? Any future updates?
    3) Is the “stalled” OTA updates for CM12.0 because they turned them off for OnePlus devices?
    4) Is OnePlus going to make a way do an OTA upgrade from CM12.0 to Oxygen 5.1? Or any version of Oxygen?

  12. blueStorm
    April 29, 2015

    First: Cyanogen ROM is absolute piece of $ITT – I already posted complain and explination in their forum. It screw up my S2 and lost some drivers on win 7, 32bit. That happen even when the Cyanogen employee assure me that I will not have any problem with my setup. I had to redo both from scratch. Total waste of time, fuc… bustards!

    Also I have Leagoo Lead1 – not bad but Bluetooth is not working, beside that looks great.