OnePlus One will be available without an invite every Tuesday

OnePlus is making its “no invite” events a regular occurrence, with the OnePlus One set to go on sale with no strings attached every Tuesday.

Announced on the company blog today, the new system will see both the 16GB Silk White ($300) and the 64GB Sandstone Black ($350) versions go on sale without invitations. The events will open every Tuesday at 12AM Pacific/3AM Eastern/8AM British/4PM Hong Kong and will last for 24 hours.

OnePlus is not giving up on its invites any time soon. The “beloved” system will remain in place for the other six days in the week, and users buying the One during the open windows will still receive invitations to give away to friends.

The new open windows are for the global variant of the OnePlus One, so Indian and Indonesian customers won’t get to join in the fun. However, OnePlus will still hold occasional events for these markets – a “one-time” limited stock event will be held in India tomorrow, starting at 10AM IST.

OnePlus has received a ton of flak over its restrictive sales policies, but the invitation system has some clear benefits for the young company. OnePlus can keep manufacturing costs in check and minimize the amount of money it sinks into stocks, and the savings are passed to the customer. OnePlus has always claimed it makes very little money on each phone it sells, though exact figures are not public.

The OnePlus One giveaway! (Update: last chance)

Update: Last chance! The giveway ends in 14 hours at the time of this writing. 

OnePlus has created a beast of a phone, and so far, the company has only been selling the device to a few select people. If you don’t have an invite to purchase the OnePlus One, don’t worry! Our friends at StackCommerce are giving one away! Before we move on, we’d like to congratulate Android Authority reader Kimberly from Louisiana, who won the Choose Your Own Android Giveaway. Kimberly, we hope you enjoy your new Android device!

So, how do you go about winning one of the best phones of 2014? Simply head to the giveaway page, enter your email address, and you’re automatically entered to win. Folks, it couldn’t be more simple than that. The contest ends in only 7 days, so be sure to get your entries in before it’s too late.

Editor’s Note: This deal is through StackCommerce, in partnership with AA Deals Store and other StackSocial partners — and not an exclusive Android Authority contest.

Head to the giveaway page to enter now!

Cyanogen 12 for OnePlus One coming soon, nightlies for Yureka in a few weeks

The Lollipop-based Cyanogen 12 build for the OnePlus One is in late testing, while the first nightlies for the Yureka will be out in the second half of February.

The information was revealed this weekend on Twitter:

QA/QE (quality assurance/quality enhancement) is one of the final stages of shipping software. Any bugs or issues found during QA/QE will be fixed before the OS goes through a re-certification for compliance with Google’s mobile services. After this, it’s up to the “3^rd party partners” (read OnePlus) to push the update over the air.

Note that this refers to the global version of the OnePlus, and it’s still not clear whether an OTA will be made available in India as well, or users will have to resort to flashing an image manually.

The process is expected to take a few days, assuming all goes well.

Cyanogen also shared a few details about the other device running Cyanogen OS out of the box, Micromax’ Yu Yureka. The device, which launched late last year, will receive its first Cyanogen nightlies from mid to end-February.

Nightlies are the cutting-edge releases of Cyanogen, meaning that they are not quite ready for regular users. A final version will be pushed over the air at a later date.

OnePlus, Cyanogen, and Micromax have been at the center of a lot of controversy over the past few months, spurred by Cyanogen’s decision to award Micromax exclusivity in the Indian market. OnePlus devices running CM were banned in the country, though the company can still ship devices with other operating systems.

While Cyanogen will continue to support the CM11S-running OnePlus One, there’s a very good chance that the next OnePlus device (expected this summer) will run OnePlus’ homegrown OxygenOS instead.

OnePlus One launches in Indonesia through Lazada partnership

Following its troubled launch in India, OnePlus is expanding to the second country outside its original markets, Indonesia.

OnePlus announced today it’s partnering with Southeast Asia retail powerhouse Lazada to bring the OnePlus One to Indonesian users. Like everywhere else in the world, the OnePlus One will be available through an invite system. Just like in India, the invitations will be country-specific.

OnePlus is teaming up with a local online retailer in order to provide proper customer support and aftermarket services. Indonesians will be able to bring their devices in for servicing at one of the “walk-in service centers located strategically throughout the nation.”

For now, only the 64GB Sandstone model of the OnePlus One is listed on Lazada, with a price tag of approximately 4.5 million rupiah ($360). The device will start shipping from next month, but pre-orders begin January 27. As usual, OnePlus will dish out invites through its forums and social channels. A range of accessories will be made available alongside the OnePlus One.

With a fast growing population of around 250 million and a low penetration of smartphones, Indonesia is a prime target for companies looking to tap into the next wave of growth coming from developing markets. BlackBerry used to dominate the Indonesian market, but in recent years, Android has taken over as the dominant platform. Before OnePlus, Xiaomi chose Indonesia as one of the first markets to expand out of China.

(Update: live now) OnePlus is allowing anyone to buy the One for two hours tomorrow

Update: the shopping window is now open. Get your OnePlus One here.

Original post:

With its high-end specs and low-priced cost, not to mention CyanogenMod pre-installed, the OnePlus One managed to earn its fair share of attention last year when it launched. Ironically, the so-called flagship killer also managed to accumulate a large amount of bad press as well, given the company’s questionable marketing tactics and the fact that outside its native country of China, it’s strictly an invitation-only affair.

OnePlus is offering a very limited window, once again, for all those interested, to buy the phone freely (but not for free, of course). A countdown page is currently displaying the hours until the event begins on January 20th. For those in North America, your call time will be 7PM-9PM EST, for Europe, 19-21 GMT, and for Asia, 19-21 HKT. And yes, that is correct; the phone will be available for two hours, thus ironically ensuring that even when anyone can buy the device, it’s still not without caveats. The phone starts at $299 for the 16GB version and $349 for the 64GB version.

The effort spent to obtain a OnePlus One certainly pays off even down to the packaging!

It will be interesting to see what OnePlus decides to do with the One after the presumed launch of an upcoming “OnePlus Two” device: will the original still be offered in sparse doses for the general public, or will it become more akin to the Google Glass Explorer program (well, prior to this month at least). It’s also worth noting that, in China, the phone is freely available to anyone at anytime, sans CyanogenMod however.