IUNI, a sub-brand of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Gionee, has released the source code for its existing devices on the XDA Developers forums as a final gesture of goodwill toward the community, and promised that if the community manages to put Android 7.0 Nougat on the company’s final device, the IUNI U3, the remnants of the firm will share a “last surprise” before vanishing entirely. Since the IUNI representative who posted on XDA Developers put out the full source code for that device, it shouldn’t be terribly hard for the talented developers and ROM makers in the XDA Developers community to build AOSP Nougat for the IUNI U3. The representative called on the community to “let the company keep living on through sharing,” referring to the practice of modifying and sharing device source codes in an effort to keep IUNI’s relatively old devices relevant.
The device in question, the IUNI U3, has specs that are somewhat similar to the LG G3, and its most recent Android version was 4.4 (KitKat). The phone sports a 5.5-inch screen set at 2,560 by 1,440 pixels, under which sits the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The cameras include a 13-megapixel Sony unit on the back and a 4-megapixel UltraPixel sensor from the HTC One M7 on the front. Dual SIM slot is also featured by the handset, and one of those slots is LTE-compatible. The battery is a 3,000mAh unit which isn’t removable.
IUNI only ever made three devices which were meant to offer premium specs at affordable prices for their time, but never really took off due to a wide variety of reasons. The IUNI U3, in particular, was handily overtaken by the OnePlus One, which was already out when the phone was released, and the Nexus 6, which came out just a couple of months later. IUNI also, up until now, never released the source code for its devices, stifling developer efforts to keep the phones alive. All of those factors led to the company having a relatively short run in the industry and officially filing for bankruptcy last year.