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‘Samsung couldn’t build a good OS if they tried’ says Cyanogen CEO at Yureka smartphone launch

A new company being birthed from Micromax (similar to how OnePlus came from OPPO) called YU Digital has launched a new middle-tier smartphone today for the Indian market, and it runs Cyanogen OS 11—much like the OnePlus One. In fact, this entire launch seems pretty familiar, as it appears YU Digital is attempting to do with the Yureka exactly what OnePlus did with the One: launch a phone out of nowhere at a killer price and hope viral marketing does its thing.

The phone comes with the specs you might expect, sporting a 5.5 HD screen (1280 x 720 resolution), a 64-bit Snapdragon 615 system-on-a-chip, 2GB of RAM, a 13 MP camera, a 5 MP front shooter, a 2,500 mAh battery, dual-sim capability, and 4G LTE capability. But the most important feature of the phone is that it runs Cyanogen OS 11 built on Android 4.4.4 KitKat, and YU seems to be very proud of that fact. “This is the best flavor of Android we’ve ever seen,” said Rahul Sharma, co-founder of Yu Televentures.

Kirt McMaster, CEO and founder of Cyanogen, even went as far as to say during the Q&A session after the announcement that its competitors can’t match them, and that “Samsung couldn’t build a good OS if they tried.” Cyanogen has been about “super optimizing Android and taking it to a new level” since its inception, he said. “We believe that… there’s an opportunity to be the first or second dominant version of Android on the planet.”

India is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world right now, and it makes sense that a company would want to step in and introduce a phone that breaks the norm. And seeing the OnePlus One, which sold well despite the fact that it had little to no traditional marketing, it makes sense that a company would want to try to replicate that success. The device launches for registration tomorrow on Amazon India for just 8999 rupees, which comes out to around $140 US dollars.

You can hear the quote in the below video around 1:16:45…

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.