If you saw Oppo’s 5th N1 trailer, you saw the head of Cyanogenmod saying he’s pretty excited about Oppo’s event on September 23rd where the N1 will be unvelied. OK, it’s not set in stone, but I think it’s pretty safe to say Oppo will be the OEM Cyanogenmod will be working with.
Back in the summer, when both were seen together at the big xda event, I thought something like this might happen, even if it was an unofficial partnership. Oppo has always been very supportive of the custom ROM community and partnering up with the most known ROM developers just makes sense.
But let’s take one step back and introduce both companies quickly just for sake of it.
I’m pretty sure most of you already know both but for those who don’t…
Who is CyanogenMod?
Cyanogenmod is the biggest and most known custom ROM development team for Android. They just recently turned from an open source team into an official company. They provide a custom ROM that is a smart, useful and advanced version of stock android. They’re are not about having a huge number of features, but rather having the best features available while giving a the user a a fantastic experience. Their ROM’s are available for almost all Android devices.
Personally, CM it isn’t really my cup of tea since I prefer ROMs that provide a bigger variety of features of all kinds. You can see more about my thoughts in my CM ROM review. But I totally understand why so many like it. it’s available for almost all devices no matter how exotic. Using it on a popular device isn’t that logical for me since there are better ones out there using their resources as well but adding even more and enhancing the custom ROM experience even further. Yes most people always mention the superior stability as a reason, but honestly I’ve tried a lot of ROMs and since most of them use mostly their code as base they are just as stable as CM itself, as long as the developer doesn’t get completely sloppy.
Nonetheless, the idea of getting CM out of the box is appealing for a lot of people even if only for those wanting to get a stock Android experience or at least something close to it. It’s definitely a more than legit alternative to vanilla android without getting to far off the Android road. Just a few days back and before the teaser regarding Oppo they announced an installer being available soon on the Playstore that automatically flashes CyanogenMod for you, you don’t really need to do anything, nice. I’m interested to see how exactly all this will work in reality.
Who is Oppo?
Oppo was first known worldwide for their premium and world-class DVD and Blu-ray players. They weren’t cheap but still very popular since they always were reference in their class. Their first hit phone that got them a lot of attention outside of Asia was the Oppo Find 5. If you are a regular visitor of this site there’s almost no chance you don’t already know it but still for more check Armando’s review. I never used it myself, but from all the reviews I watched and all I read in forums it seems to be a super premium device that can easily compete with the HTC One in terms of build quality if not even beat it. They only flaw some people are addressing is the below or at best average battery life, mostly the standby life in specific.
The N1 that will be presented on September 23rd and will be a 5.9″ phablet that is supposed to deliver an outstanding camera. I don’t want to go too much into details yet about the specifics since they are all just leaks and rumors and nothing is confirmed yet and for the sake of a few readers who don’t like any sort of rumors pushing, I’ll just leave it like that.
Is the speculated corporation a smart choice?
There are pros and cons coming out of this, let’s check both…
Why it could be good?
If it turns out to be a comparatively successfully corporation, it would definitely grab the attention of even more people than CM already does, especially people who don’t have that a lot of knowledge of custom ROMs. It could be the first stepping stone to get a broader public notice and even acceptance for custom ROMs in general not only CyanogenMod. Definitely something I’m “rooting” for.
Why it could be bad?
I’m sure this whole thing will piss off a lot of die-hard open source opportunists because a lot of people’s free work could now be used to make money out of it. One recent popular example is the main developer of Focal (previously CM’s advanced camera app) leaving the team and having the software taken out of CyanogenMod entirely.
I really hope all those things won’t have too much of an impact on the entire custom Rom community, not just CyanogenMod itself. It’s never popular if open source development gets taken professionally. It’s simply against the whole open source idea itself.
What I think?
Personally the whole installer hype itself doesn’t interest me that much. If I use the installer or root myself and flash manually, in the end it won’t make a big difference, also I won’t end up on staying on CyanogenMod anyways but start jumping from one rom to another doing my reviews. Besides the ROM reviews, I would prefer to use another ROM that gives me more features and flexibility. I think slightly differently about the corporation, it’s really cool to get CyanogenMod out of the box maybe even the rumored dual-boot with CM and Oppo’s own software which for me seems to be more focused on the Asian market.
Oppo could be the first of many companies to offer this kind of feature, if it gets a broader notice and acceptance I could see Sony and some others taking up on that idea as well. Looking at Samsung, HTC and LG’s UI offerings I definitely prefer CM over those anytime. But I also wish this new CM ROM on the N1 to be more than just a simple build of pure CM itself. I hope they take some of Oppo’s Color ROM ideas like double tap to wake and some of the other features and add them to CM. Just pure CM sounds almost to lazy and boring to me. It should debut some small things not available before, but not be exclusive as this would cause friction in the custom ROM community.
Additional thoughts
Yes to the installer and yes to the corporation with some small qualms on what bad voices this could bring with it. In general it could really help the community make a big step forward going mainstream. To help show people how amazing Android really can be. I won’t even mention how this could make the gap between Android’s capabilities even larger compared to iOS. On the other hand this could also attract even more noobs to xda asking the same annoying sometimes stupid questions again and again. It’s okay as long as it’s stay mostly on CM for now but it’s a good stepping stone for more power user ROMs. I know CM users don’t like to hear me saying that it is kind of noob’s ROM, but after reading the forums and G+ posts it just looks this way. More than once I’ve seen long time CM users finally switch to more heavy featured ROMs, ending up in their jaws on the floor seeing how much more is possible. I also get that a lot of people see all those things as useless and unnecessary bloat and they just want a pure, slightly enhanced Android and nothing more. Personally I see this completely different and I hope those people can understand my opinion as well. In the end it’s still Android under the hood, more or less features but still Android. It’s always better to have the freedom of huge choice and possibilities than being tied into a closed eco system that doesn’t even allow you to do the most simple and totally taken for granted things like changing the keyboard. So either way enjoy Android and look out what’s coming in the future.
Best luck to CyanogenMod and Oppo. I hope it turns out as successful as they hope for it to become. I’ll definitely keep an eye out on further development.