Oppo who recently opened their doors to a selection of international media including Ausdroid; have been doing some great things in the consume space, producing good smartphones for consumers recently that (despite their low dollar value) have impressed reviewers. They’ve continued to push into the consumer space, but are also quite popular with the enthusiast community and to that end, they’ve announced that they intend to maintain an AOSP ROM for some of their “key devices” which will allow those enthusiasts to stay up to date with the latest and greatest that Android has to offer.
Oppo’s ColorOS Android skin strikes a love it or hate it reaction, but seems to be quite popular in their home market. The AOSP ROM will offer a little more for enthusiasts, including a more ‘stock’ Android appearance, all the while including some of the ColorOS specific features, such as Pure Image (ColorOS camera app), screen off gestures, and MaxxAudio (Find 7/7a only).
The AOSP ROM will take a little work, it’s akin to flashing something like Cyanogen to your device, but it will be officially supported by the Manufacturer and available to download from their site. Flashing it will be relatively simple via the stock recovery on the devices and will not void your warranty – though with any flashing activity, it’s always worth doing a little research first.
Oppo says:
Warranty for devices sold over oppostyle.com or Amazon in Europe will not be impacted. Customers who bought their phones anywhere else, such as a store in Asia, Africa or Latin-America, should consult their local resellers for more information. If in doubt, please always consult local resellers first, as we cannot make any guarantees for them.
The list of supported devices is pretty thin right now, initially only including the Find 7, but plans are underway to move to the R5, R5S, with Android Marshmallow builds of the ROM planned for release to the R7 in the near future. On the surface this is a brilliant move from Oppo and will almost certainly assist their sales for users who have not taken a liking to Color OS.
What manufacturer would you most like to see follow this example from Oppo and release an AOSP ROM?
So basically, you will be able to easily turn an Oppo device (which are well priced) into something like a Nexus? Oppo, take my money!
I’d like to see Sony do this.
I’d like to see every Android OEM do this. Imagine being able to flash an AOSP ROM on a Samsung device with everything being pure android except maybe the camera app etc? Yes please.