OnePlus One will now be tasting Android Lollipop by late March

sincity · February 23, 2015

The month of February is rapidly coming to a close, and there's still no sign of the latest flavor of Android on one of the coolest flagship smartphones around - but the wait may soon be over.

Android Police today reported that the popular OnePlus One smartphone is now expected to receive a CyanogenMod-infused update to Android 5.0 Lollipop sometime in the next five weeks, a bit later than initially expected.

Back in mid-January, Cyanogen founder Steve Kondik promised a stable version of CyanogenMod 12 for Lollipop would arrive this month, a precursor to OnePlus updating their wildly in-demand handset.

According to a Twitter conversation Monday morning with OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, the expected CyanogenMod 12S update will now arrive in "mid to late March," along with the company's own OxygenOS ROM.

Go your own way

The upcoming CyanogenMod 12S update is particularly noteworthy since it could be the last vestige of the partnership between OnePlus and Cyanogen, who are currently mired in a licensing spat regarding devices sold in India.

As the world awaits the OnePlus Two, the smartphone maker has started working on its own forked version of Android, which will arrive in March as a user-installable ROM that will extend the life of the One handset another two years.

After numerous delays, OnePlus One owners are rightfully eager to get their hands on a taste of Lollipop made expressly for their favorite handset, which co-founder Pei blamed on "proprietary drivers, code, QA [and] certifications."

The OxygenOS team has promised a version of Android uniquely optimized for the company's hardware, with improved quick unlock and settings and the promise of no bloatware, a trend we can certainly get behind.