OnePlus delays its CM12S Lollipop update until March

OnePlus is now upsetting a lot of fans. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

OnePlus is now upsetting a lot of fans. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

OnePlus is lucky enough to have some incredibly passionate fans who love its debut smartphone, but the company’s apparent lack of urgency surrounding its Lollipop update is upsetting a lot of them.

Founder Carl Pei today confirmed that the long-awaited CyanogenMod 12S update is now delayed until March.

When Google announced Android 5.0 last June, OnePlus was one of the first smartphone makers to promise a Lollipop upgrade within 90 days of its public release.

“We’re keen to announce today that the OnePlus One will indeed be getting the [Android] L treatment,” wrote Mike from OnePlus on the company’s official forum. “When, you ask? That depends on Google. We promise to have it done within three months of their releasing a final build.”

It has now been almost four months since Lollipop made its debut on the Nexus 6, and still, OnePlus One owners are stuck on KitKat. Both OnePlus and CyanogenMod have been promising that the software is close for weeks, but it’s clearly not as close as users would like.

“We released an L alpha a while ago, but a more stable build (OxygenOS & CM12S) will need to wait until March,” OnePlus founder Carl Pei tweeted today. “Sorry for delay!”

If you revisit that Lollipop announcement on the OnePlus forum today, you’ll find thousands of disgruntled fans who are now fed up with waiting.

“Yeah, I’m going back to nexus,” writes RetroSA. “I bought this as an alternative for a great price because I figured there would be updated at a reasonable interval, especially when they gave us a 3 month timeline. If I wanted to wait this long I’d buy a f***ing Samsung.”

Of course, there is an alternative to waiting. Installing a custom recovery on the OnePlus One is incredibly easy, which means you can ditch CM11S and upgrade to CyanogenMod 12 — based on Lollipop — yourself.

But the downside to this is there is no stable version of CM12 for the One just yet, and standard CM software doesn’t include the One’s many unique features, like its custom camera app and lockscreen, the OnePlus theme, and apps like AudioFX.