"We got notified about Cyanogen’s India plans only six days ago": OnePlus co-founder

OnePlus finally launched its flagship device, the OnePlus One in India today at an attractive pricing of Rs 21,999. Not only has OnePlus managed to get the price right, but they have also announced dedicated physical service centers across India in partnership with HCL. But one of the shocking developments was Cyanogen announcing an exclusive partnership with Micromax . According to their official release, they would not provide OS support for other devices shipping with Cyanogen OS in India. Considering OnePlus One comes with the Cyanogen Mod 11S, the pivotal question on everyone’s mind was the future of the smartphone in India. “We got notified about Cyanogen’s exclusive India partnership six days ago, on Nov 26th. It was quite sudden and we were not given any reason for this sudden decision,” said Carl Pei, Co founder and director, Global for OnePlus. While this directive is only meant for India, Pei told us that outside India, OnePlus is still on good terms with Cyanogen. “In fact only last night I received a mail thread from Cyanogen, where we were discussing about the Lollipop updates (on Cyanogen Mod) for the handset,” he said. When asked if this was for global users barring India, Pei said that they do not know how Cyanogen is going to differentiate that based on regions. OnePlus is still to discuss the practicalities of the future CM updates on its handsets with Cyanogen. The current batch of devices selling in India will ship with the Cyanogen branding. “By the time we got the notification from Cyanogen about their exclusive India partnership, we had already shipped the handsets for the India launch” said Pei. In the meantime, OnePlus is not sitting relaxed. They are working on their own custom ROM which they will put into beta testing soon. “We are releasing a community build. So users who are interested can download it and flash it. We want to get an idea about the bugs in our custom ROM from the users so we are ready for a stable launch soon.” Pei said that they are looking at a stable launch by February 2015. Pei talked more about OnePlus’s future plans and their sales philosophy. Stay tuned for our full interview with Carl Pei.