Following a temporary ban in India, OnePlus has released its own alpha Lollipop ROM forthe One based on stock Android 5.0 -- with no Cyanogen influence. For now, the alpha software is only available as a download, and you'll need to wipe your phone in order to get it. It's also very basic and OnePlus said it includes "no extras beyond the stock features of AOSP Lollipop," though it promised to build on it over time. OnePlus started talking about its own Android fork shortly before Cyanogen inked an exclusive deal with Indian smartphone maker Micromax.
When ready, the new ROM will no doubt be used in India to avoid any conflict with Micromax. It's not clear, however, whether OnePlus will use it for One models elsewhere and eschew Cyanogen software completely. That might not sit well with buyers who specifically signed up for the Cyanogen experience, though most users would likely be happy with something close to stock Android. So far, OnePlus models are still running the Cyanogen 11s, KitKat 4.4.4 version, and Cyanogen's Lollipop flavor (12s) for the One still looks far off. As for future OnePlus models? We wouldn't be surprised to see the company go down the same road as Xiaomi and others with its own Android build.
It’s safe to say that OnePlus and their software partner Cyanogen have been experiencing some communication difficulties lately. If you don’t remember, OnePlus found out that they couldn’t ship the OnePlus One to India running Cyanogen’s software, thanks to an exclusive deal between Cyanogen and Micromax. Then to clarify, Cyanogen released a statement telling saying this wasn’t necessarily the case. If that’s not enough, a few weeks later, the OnePlus One was completely banned in India, thanks to that deal with Cyanogen and Micromax. After about a week the ban was lifted and Indian users could begin to buy the phone again.
Thanks to this whole debacle, OnePlus has put together a group of software developers, and is now on its way to releasing their own ROM independently from Cyanogen. Earlier today, OnePlus announced their first ROM, Android Lollipop Alpha. This new software build is OnePlus’ first foray into building their own custom ROM. The Android Lollipop Alpha build is in the very early stages of development, so there are naturally a ton of known bugs with the software already. There aren’t any extra features baked into the OS, so it’s basically just bare-bones AOSP Lollipop for now.
You can flash the software to your OnePlus One using the instructions on the site. When the software is ready for the general public in the future, OnePlus will likely send out an over-the-air update to its users. So, if you aren’t keen on flashing alpha software to your device, give it some time, and you’ll receive OnePlus’ software sometime within the next couple of months.
Remember, this is an alpha build of the software, so it will be extremely buggy a difficult to use in some situations. Here are the known bugs in the software so far:
- Data roaming is on by default. Make sure to turn if off to avoid potential charges.
- As always, flashing a custom ROM incurs the risk of bricking your phone. Make sure you know what you’re doing and backup everything.
- Camera and video may be unstable. This build supports 4k video, however quality may be low as we are still fine-tuning the camera.
- Capacitive keys do not turn off when you enable software keys.
- Clock crashes periodically.
- If using the new app pinning feature in L, make sure to turn on the software keys first. Otherwise, you will have to reboot your machine.
- On first boot, startup time will be a bit slow. Rest assured we will speed things up in the future.
- Wi-Fi may be unstable