A few months ago, Google announced its collaboration with three Indian smartphone manufacturers in a tie-up to launch Android One, a budget smartphone for the masses. The companies included Micromax, a well-known Indian smartphone manufacturer, to launch Android One.
Android One, announced by Google at the IO event, went live with three companies debuting their handsets in India. Micromax Android One smartphones are presently available in India for a price of around Rs 6,000.
However, a recent report in the media points out that Micromax will give up Google’s deal and switch to CyanogenMod Android operating system for their future smartphones.
CyanogenMod is a started as a hobby project by Steve Kondik, a developer, who found out that Google’s Android operating system could be rooted and the operating system can be tweaked. Later, more people joined in and the developer team grew, gaining fame on the famous XDA forums. CyanogenMod is a third-party developer ROM for Android smartphones and can be installed on hundreds of smartphones. It includes many tweaks and additional codes that can be used by various Android tinkering fans. These tweaks can help you gain additional control over your Android smartphone as compared to the features that are either hidden or disabled by the official Google Android operating system.
The report also states that Google’s Android Head Sundar Pichai had approached to buy CyanogenMod, so that they could include the tweaks in the stock Android OS. The latter refused the deal, stating that they would prefer to grow on their own.
If Micromax chooses to opt for CyanogenMod over Google’s Android One, there are high chances that the next smartphones would be highly tweaked and feature-rich devices. Presently there are many smartphone companies that use tweaked Android operating systems. For example, Xiaomi, OPPO, OnePlus, and a few others are already using Android-based developer ROMs on their smartphones. OnePlus already uses CyanogenMod as their operating system.
