The first smartphone from OnePlus, the OnePlus One, was released two years ago in June 2014. This device is based around the quad-core, 2.5 GHz, 32-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset, backed up by 3 GB of RAM. It uses a 5.5-inch, 1080p resolution display and comes with either 16 GB or 64 GB of internal storage. There’s a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front facing camera and a 3,100 mAh internal battery. However, whilst the OnePlus One has a commendable specification for 2014, the device is better known for its advertising and marketing strategy. OnePlus essentially spent all of their money designing and building the device and constructed the marketing on a very small budget. The company used an invite-based system, whereby potential customers had to score an invite to buy the OnePlus One rather than simply being able to buy one. Invites were difficult to come by at first and OnePlus ran a series of contests for customers to win the right to buy the device. Some of these contests were less successful than others, one caused the company to officially apologize, but they all played their part in raising the company’s profile.
Another reason why OnePlus was in the headlines for 2014 and early 2015 is the fight between OnePlus and Micromax around Micromax’s exclusive deal to sell Cyanogen-branded products in India. Ultimately, OnePlus developed their own operating system, Oxygen OS. The culmination of the legal battle around the OnePlus One operating system and the invite-based way of selling meant that the OnePlus One was one of the most talked about devices of 2014, sold under the “Never Settle” moniker.
The OnePlus One originally received the update to Cyanogen OS 13, based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, back in April 2016, some time before the later follow-up device, the OnePlus 2. With Cyanogen OS 13, OnePlus One customers benefit from a similar set of features as other devices upgrading to Android 6.0 Marshmallow including Google’s refinements to power consumption and amendments to application privacy settings, including the ability to individually tailor an application’s permissions, which Cyanogen OS already benefited from. Following which, it now seems that the Cyanogen team have released an over the air update to Cyanogen OS 13.1, which is based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. This update includes stability, performance and includes new mods for a number of Microsoft applications, notably Cortana, OneNote and Skype (including a Skype-compatible dialer application). The update weighs in at just under 400 MB.