Cyanogen Inc. had a very public falling out with its previous global hardware partner OnePlus, but it has since managed to get its version of Android on a few more devices in developing markets. The Alcatel Hero 2+ was supposed to be the next North American Cyanogen OS phone, but this phone has been mysteriously canceled a few months away from release.
The $299 Alcatel Hero 2+ was announced at Mobile World Congress in early March. It was intended to be the new almost-flagship phone running Cyanogen OS. This version of Android is based on the open source CyanogenMod ROM, but comes with additional closed source features and is distributed pre-installed on phones with Google apps. The Hero 2+ was supposed to have a 6-inch 1080p screen, 2GB of RAM, LTE, a 13MP camera, 16GB of storage, and a 2GHz octa-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) made by MediaTek. Overall, a very respectable mid-range phone.
The cryptic notice sent out by the firms danced around the reason for the cancellation, but did say the device “does not have a clear Android 5.1 upgrade path.” In light of that reality, the companies decided to skip it and begin work on a new device that will support updated software. What does this mean, though? How can a phone that doesn’t exist yet have problems with future Android updates? The problem appears to be the hardware.
Interestingly, the phone was announced as coming with Cyanogen OS 11, which is based on Android 4.4 KitKat. Other phones like the OnePlus One and the Indian Yu Cyanogen devices are running the Lollipop version already. Releasing the Hero 2+ with KitKat would have been odd to say the least. While this phone wasn’t specced like a flagship device, it should certainly have the power to run modern versions of Android. It’s less the power of the SoC, and more about who makes it. MediaTek is known for some shady dealings, and this is probably what caused the cancellation of this device.
The Hero 2+ was designed around the MT6592 SoC, which has eight low-power Cortex-A7 CPU cores. It’s been used in a huge number of budget devices in the last few years, but almost every one of them is stuck on KitKat. Taiwan-based MediaTek is known in the developer community for restricting the source code (also known as kernel source) of its chipsets, even though that’s technically a violation of the GPL agreement under which Android is distributed.
The only way to get the code necessary to make MediaTek chips work on new versions of Android is to license it and presumably pay a fee. Since that’s not really in the budget for a mid-range device, MediaTek phones often go un-updated. A Cyanogen senior engineer commented on Google+ to point the finger at the MediaTek chipset, so it’s a safe bet that’s the cause. Someone at Cyanogen or Alcatel must have realized they were getting into a bad situation with this piece of hardware and the decision was made to can it.
It’s a blow to Cyanogen Inc, which hasn’t had much presence outside developing markets after breaking it off with OnePlus. Alcatel will apparently still make a Cyanogen phone, but I bet it won’t be running a MediaTek chipset.
