Previous rumors suggested that Lenovo subsidiary ZUK will launch ZUK Z1 in India soon. Today Lenovo confirmed that ZUK Z1 smartphone will run Cyanogen OS out-of-the-box in the country. The news is verified by head of the company's Product Marketing division Anuj Sharma.
The ZUK Z1 has already launched internally with Cyanogen so the news is not a surprise. But when it comes to the Indian smartphone market the Cyanogen OS is an important development.
In India, since 2014 Micromax's sub-brand Yu Televentures has had an exclusive deal with Cyanogen as part of which the former has been launching Cyanogen OS-powered phones all this while. Though, with this least confirmation from Lenovo, it seems that the Yu-Cyanogen deal has come to an end.
When asked about the deal, Sharma said that the 64GB variant of the Z1 will be released in India. The smartphone will run Android 5.1 Lollipop-based Cyanogen OS 12.1 at launch. As per a report from China the ZUK Z1 will be sold in India as the Lenovo Z1. Well there is no official information why the company took this move. If you have missed there are also few rumors that the smartphone will discard the ZUK brand name and it could be called Lenovo Z1.