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During CyanogenMod's heyday, one of the ROM's biggest features was the Theme Engine. You could download any number of themes from the Play Store to change up the entire system's look. However, the feature didn't make an appearance in CyanogenMod 14 (based on Android 7.0 Nougat), and there hasn't been much talk of working on it since the project reorganized into LineageOS.
All the way back in 2013 (has it really been that long?), Steve Kondik and many other CyanogenMod contributors founded Cyanogen Inc. The company had two goals, to maintain the existing community-created CyanogenMod ROM, and to develop 'Cyanogen OS' for other manufacturers' devices. That business model could certainly have worked, but it didn't take long for the company to make costly mistakes.
UK smartphone maker Wileyfox has been one of Cyanogen Inc's most consistent partners lately, releasing new budget smartphones running the software on a regular basis. Cyanogen is over, but Wileyfox is forging onward with a new phone called the Swift 2X. It's running Cyanogen OS right now, which might be a problem, but it's also the most powerful (and expensive) phone the company has made.
Wileyfox is a tiny phone manufacturer based in Britain that focuses on solid budget and mid-range designs, with low profit margins partially enabled thanks to a partnership with Cyanogen Inc. for the phones' Android software. That partnership doesn't seem to be long for this world, after it was announced that Cyanogen is more or less shutting down its full Android development team. That leaves Wileyfox customers (among many others) in something of a lurch. According to a few Reddit posts, the company is actively looking into alternatives.
The CyanogenMod project is easily the biggest and most-used custom Android ROM out there. But a series of poor decisions has basically sunk the corporate spin-off Cyanogen Inc., and that failure is also sinking the tools that the original open-source project has built up. Some of the original CyanogenMod team announced earlier today that they'll continue their work for community-created Android device ROMs under a new banner, Lineage OS.
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Well, this is it. On December 31, 2016, we will bid adieu to the ambitious but riddled with managerial missteps venture that was Cyanogen. In the ongoing saga of Cyanogen's "reorganization" efforts, we've seen Kirk McMaster being ousted as CEO and replaced by Lior Tal, followed by a modular OS announcement, then we started hearing rumbles of layoffs, office closures, and more, which ended with a rather public finger pointing and break up with Steve Kondik, the guy behind Cyanogen and CyanogenMod.
It's no secret why CyanogenMod is the most popular custom ROM out there; not only does it support a metric crapload of Android devices, but it also keeps them going far past their primes. The latest devices to get support for CM14.1 (Android 7.1 Nougat) nightlies include two variants of the Galaxy S III, the second-generation Moto X, a few Oppo devices, two versions of the HTC One Max, two Xiaomi phones, and more.
CyanogenMod is virtually the best-known custom ROM out there, and for good reason: it brings the newest version of Android to devices that would otherwise have to wait much longer to receive it, or would never receive it at all. This week, quite a few popular devices have received CyanogenMod 14.1, which is based on Android 7.1 Nougat.
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Steve Kondik has left a statement about the rather troubling news coming out of Cyanogen Inc. this week on the [private] official CyanogenMod developer Google+ community, and things aren't looking pretty. While Kondik doesn't say outright that he's leaving "the Inc," it's pretty strongly implied that he wants nothing to do with the company anymore. The problem is that while Kondik wants out and to move on with the CyanogenMod project, there could be significant legal hurdles in fully detangling the open source community project from the for-profit venture.
Earlier today, some disappointing news came from Steve Kondik, CyanogenMod's founder and Cyanogen Inc.'s cofounder; because of Cyanogen Inc.'s failure, "(CyanogenMod) is very much affected." For the time being, though, CyanogenMod maintainers are still churning out new builds of CM14.1 (Android 7.1 Nougat) for many devices. We've got seven new devices with CyanogenMod 14.1 nightlies this time around (well, more like five, since two pairs of the devices are almost exactly the same).
According to sources both in and outside the company, Cyanogen Inc. is effectively ceasing to exist as it has for much of its short lifetime as of today, with a renewed round of layoffs and an internal announcement at the company that its Seattle headquarters will close by the end of the year, AKA within around a month. This should not be surprising to anyone at this point.
Cyanogen Inc. may be dying as a company, but the voluntarily-maintained CyanogenMod ROMs are still alive and kicking. Case in point: seven more devices are joining CyanogenMod 14.1, which is based on Android 7.1 Nougat. Six of these Android-powered machines have builds already up, but one doesn't yet.
Yesterday we found out that Kirt McMaster, CEO of Cyanogen, was stepping down to become an Executive Chairman at the company. Now Cyanogen has made a formal announcement, highlighting the new Modular OS program and reorganization.
Cyanogen, Inc has been partnered with Microsoft for a while now, bringing various mods to devices running Cyanogen OS. The company is launching the Cortana mod in India today, starting out with the OnePlus One. Cortana first came to the Cyanogen operating system in January this year, followed by the 13.1 update, which enabled more widespread mod support.
CyanogenMod founder and Cyanogen Inc. cofounder Steve Kondik has published a blog post on the official CyanogenMod blog today. That is the blog associated with the community project, not Cyanogen Inc. Kondik's post appears to serve dual purposes: to ensure the community that CyanogenMod isn't going anywhere (and no one suggested it was), and that the company's alleged "pivot to apps" isn't happening.
Last year Cyanogen (the company) announced plans to release flashable bundles of its internally-developed, proprietary Android apps for CyanogenMod (the original community ROMs). It's taken a while, but now those apps are available for CyanogenMod 13 (that's the version based on Android 6.0). Users can download the package at cyngn.com/c-apps, and for the moment they include the custom theme chooser and theme store, Cyanogen's Truecaller-equipped dialer, the new Gallery app, the Cyanogen Account manager, and the AudioFX equalizer.
In London today, Wileyfox, a tiny (CEO Nick Muir says it has 27 employees) British phone manufacturer, announced the Spark: a £89.99 ($120) phone that has razor-thin margins. Specs include a 1.3GHz MediaTek processor, 1GB RAM, and one 8-megapixel camera on each side.
Slowly but surely, Android offshoot-slash-alternative Cyanogen OS is gaining ground. The incorporated and semi-proprietary version of the CyanogenMod ROM now powers a handful of retail-available phones from companies like YU, Zuk, and Smartfen, though larger manufacturers like OnePlus and Oppo have seemingly cooled on Cyanogen software. Speaking of OnePlus, its One hardware was the first to get access to Cyanogen OS version 13, based on Android 6.0.1 code. Today the Swift from Wileyfox becomes the second.
Cyanogen Inc is rolling out Cyanogen OS 12.1.1 for the OnePlus One today, and it's not just any update. This is the first version of Cyanogen OS with support for Microsoft Cortana baked right in. After Microsoft finally made Cortana official for other phones, then removed the always listening feature, the OnePlus One is rather unique.