BLU Products might not necessarily be a company familiar to some of you guys, but as a quick overview, they are a US-based smartphone manufacturer who has churned out several affordable handsets in the past, and if you’re a fan of CyanogenMod then perhaps BLU Products might be a company worth keeping an eye out.
Speaking in an interview with Forbes, Cyanogen’s CEO Kirt McMaster revealed that they would be working with BLU on creating an Android smartphone. We suppose this isn’t particularly exciting but here’s the kicker – it seems that instead of being your standard Android smartphone, BLU will be launching the device running on Cyanogen without any of Google’s services.
This means that instead of the Google Play Store, users will have access to the Amazon Appstore. Opera will replace Chrome, Nokia’s HERE maps will replace Google Maps, and other apps such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and Spotify will also replace their Google equivalents. Presumably Boxer will also be the handset’s default email client.
This is part of Cyanogen’s plan on taking Android away from Google by making users less reliant on Google for their services. Will this experiment be successful? Will users be able to live with access to Google’s services? We suppose only time will tell, but for now there is no word on when we can expect to see this Cyanogen BLU handset to be released.
Filed in . Read more about Android, Blu Products and Cyanogen.