Cyanogen OS is pre-loaded on very few smartphones around the world, so when a brand starts offering one of the most popular Android ROMs pre-installed on its devices, the interest and curiosity is understandable. Wileyox is one such company, whose two current offerings, the Storm and the Swift, both come with software from Cyanogen Inc. Both the devices were announced in August, last year, by the London, UK-based tech startup, and went on sale in late October. While the Storm is a mid-ranger powered by the Snapdragon 615 chipset from Qualcomm, the Swift is an entry-level device with the Snapdragon 410 SoC running under the hood. However, more than just raw specs, the USP of the brand is the Cyanogen OS that comes bundled with the phones.
Talking about the two handsets launched last year by Wileyfox, the more affordable of the two, the Swift, is now available in a new color option in the UK. The white colored model of the handset is now listed on Amazon UK at a price of only £129.99, which is exactly the same as that of the black version of the device, which has been available for purchase over the past couple of months. Of course, Wileyfox is not the only company that launches smartphones pre-loaded with Cyanogen OS. Handsets from Indian smartphone vendor Micromax’s online-only ‘YU’ brand also runs Cyanogen OS out the box. Even OnePlus started out with Cyanogen back in its OnePlus One days, but an acrimonious fallout in late 2014 led to the Chinese smartphone vendor cancelling its contract with Cyanogen and developing its own Oxygen OS.
As for the Wileyfox Swift, the smartphone features a 5-inch 720p fully-laminated IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The handset is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410, as mentioned already, and comes with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. Meanwhile, the rear-facing primary camera on the Swift sports a 13-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, whereas the front-facing selfie cam is a 5-megapixel unit. The battery is a 2,500 mAh Lithium Polymer unit, and the handset runs Android 5.1 Lollipop in the form of Cyanogen OS 12.1. The device measures 141.15 mm in length, 71 mm in width and 9.37 mm in thickness.
Wileyfox Swift