Cyanogen, the company which attempted to “take Android away from Google” with a heavily-customised, competing alternative. announced its operating system is shutting down on Friday.
As a result, those manufacturers with handsets running the forked OS must look for an alternative. One of those is the British mid-range phone-maker Wileyfox.
The plan is now for Wileyfox to bring its entire portfolio of devices onto the official build of Google’s Android Nougat operating system (via AndroidPolice).
In a support statement posted to Reddit, the firm said: “Our OS Strategy and Software plan moving forward will be complete soon. We have agreed a smooth transition where we will continue deliver constant and consistent software and OS updates. Our plan is to bring our entire Wileyfox portfolio onto Android N, the latest version of Google Android’s OS, in a timely manner – while still continuing to protect the range with Google software security updates. We will share our full and final plan in due time.”
On Christmas Eve, the team behind CyanogenMod OS, which also runs on the OnePlus One among other handsets, said the OS will be discontinued as a result of efforts to consolidate the company’s operations.
An earlier decision by the parent company Cyanogen Inc to shut down the CyanogenMod infrastructure was described as a “deathblow” for the operating system.
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“The open source project and source code will remain available for anyone who wants to build CyanogenMod personally.”
For owners of devices such as the OnePlus One, it will mean shifting over to the open source CyanogenMod. Later OnePlus phones switched to Android.
However, there is hope, in the form of a new project dubbed Lineage OS and described as a continuation of CyanogenMod’s work.
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