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​Lollipop-based Cyanogen OS 12 rollout begins today for OnePlus One

The several-week delay in delivering the latest version of Cyanogen OS 12 to OnePlus One device owners is over.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer
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Cyanogen OS 12
Image: Cyanogen
Good news for OnePlus One owners: the latest version of Cyanogen's commercial Android ROM will (finally) begin to roll out today.

Owners of the low-cost, high-performance OnePlus One have had a long and, for some, frustrating wait for Cyanogen OS 12. The ROM is based on the Android 5.0 Lollipop update that Google released late last year for Nexus devices, and has already been pushed out to last year's flagships from Android OEMs like HTC, Sony and Samsung. Lollipop now powers around five percent of all Android phones and tablets.

Cyanogen OS 12 was meant to roll-out to the OnePlus One by the end of March but hit a certification snag that delayed deployment for several weeks. OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei on Sunday reassured users that the update would almost certainly come this week.

While OnePlus One owners vented frustration at the hardware maker for the delays, the wait also doesn't look good for Cyanogen, which last month raised a new funding round worth $80m to grow its supposedly more open alternative to Google's Android.

Nonetheless, Cyanogen today said the Cyanogen OS 12 update would begin rolling out to "all" OnePlus One devices owners today, and will bring with it fresh tweaks to the open source version of Android, such as its built-in email app from Boxer and other features taken from the community version of Cyanogen.

The Boxer-powered app fills a few feature gaps on the former Cyanogen email app, and now includes support for Exchange, multiple accounts, and "canned responses" for quick replies. It also offers different LED colours for email notifications and the ability to customise actions for left or right swipes on a message.

The other customisation feature the update brings is Cyanogen's new paid and free themes through App Themer, which lets users set a new theme for each app. Interestingly, Samsung has adopted a similar concept for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, allowing users to apply dozens of different built-in themes to its TouchWiz UI, though it's not quite as flexible as App Themer.

Being Lollipop, of course, the update will also bring Google's Material Design scheme to OnePlus and Yureka Yu devices. The update is coming "soon" for Yu owners, according to the company.

Meanwhile, the community version of CM12 remains as a nightly release and can be flashed to about 50 different models at the moment. According to Cyanogen developers a "proper" release - meaning its stabler M builds - will be coming this month.

"CM 12.0 has now been vetted, QA tested (both by users and corporations) and is nearing a proper release. We'll be looking at a 12.0 release sometime this month - then shifting to prepare the non-nightly release of 12.1," Cyanogen developers said last week.

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