Cyanogen announced yesterday that it will now support Android One devices, marking its intention to enable users to install CyanogenMod 11 builds (based on Android 4.4 KitKat) on the low cost devices. They also announced that an update to Lollipop-based CM12 is also in the works.
The announcement was posted to the Cyanogen blog, and the release is significant in a number of ways for the company:
This release represents a few firsts for us. Not only are these the first Android One devices and first official release of CM for these devices, the Android One device is the first ever officially supported Mediatek device. Mediatek (MTK) devices have been notoriously difficult for the developer community to complete fully functional bring-ups, and this marks a milestone in that effort.
(Bit of a backhand at MediaTek, but there you go)
While there has been a CM11 port available for Android One since October, that version didn’t allow usage of dual-SIM radios… or in fact, cellular data. These issues have been fixed.
The company has also thanked young upstart CM contributor Varun Chitre, who had the beginnings of CM on the Android One kicked off within two weeks of Google’s launch and has dedicated his time since October to bring this build to Android One users, in addition to his duties maintaining CM’s Sony builds.
Cyanogen has stated that given that all three Android One devices don’t seem to differentiate that much in terms of hardware, it will be rolling out a unified ROM which it it has codenamed ‘sprout’.
If you have any of the current current-gen Android One Device (Spice Dream Uno, Karbonn Sparkle V or Micromax’s Canvas A1), you can look for the ‘sprout’ ROMs in Cyanogen’s download area, or you can just click here to download it directly.
Will you be installing CM11 on your Android One device? Tell us in the comments!
