September 23, 2013. OPPO has just unveiled the N1 at an event in Beijing, and it is the strangest flagship smartphone of the year. A 5.9-inch 1080p LCD. A rotating 13MP camera module that swings 206 degrees on a motorized hinge, converting the rear-facing main camera into a selfie camera by physically rotating toward the user’s face. A rear touch panel that functions as a trackpad for navigating the OS without touching the front screen. And — the detail generating the most international attention today — an optional CyanogenMod installation that ships from the factory, making the N1 the first smartphone ever sold with CyanogenMod pre-installed as an official option.
Pete Lau is the OPPO executive most responsible for the CyanogenMod deal. He has been building relationships with the Android developer community, and the N1 is the product of those relationships expressed in hardware. In two months, Pete Lau will leave OPPO to found OnePlus. The N1 is, in a meaningful sense, the last product he makes at OPPO before building the brand that will be positioned against it.
The CyanogenMod partnership and what it actually means
The CyanogenMod version of the N1 ships on Christmas Eve 2013. Buying a new Android phone that arrives running CyanogenMod out of the box is, in December 2013, a genuinely novel experience. CyanogenMod has existed since 2008 as a community ROM project for users who wanted cleaner, faster, more customizable Android than their manufacturer provided. Preinstalling it on a flagship device is OPPO acknowledging that there is a specific global audience — the Android enthusiast community that reads XDA and runs custom ROMs — whose goodwill is commercially valuable and whose attention can be earned through software philosophy rather than retail distribution.
The same logic that Pete Lau is bringing to the CyanogenMod partnership here is the logic he will bring to OnePlus in December 2013 when he founds the company. The OnePlus One will also launch with CyanogenMod. The community relationship the N1 is building in late 2013 is the same community relationship OnePlus will attempt to capture in 2014. Whether that is coincidence or deliberate knowledge transfer is a question only Lau can answer, but the timing is not ambiguous.
The rotating camera as design philosophy
The rotating camera module is the hardware innovation that gets the most dismissive reaction from the Western tech press today, and I think that reaction is premature. The selfie camera problem in late 2013 is real: front cameras are typically 2MP sensors with fixed focal lengths optimized for video calls, not photography. The rear camera is where sensor quality, optics, and image processing investment are concentrated. OPPO’s solution to the selfie quality gap is to eliminate it by making the same hardware serve both orientations. The 13MP rear sensor at f/2.0 becomes the selfie camera when rotated. The best camera on the device is therefore always accessible for both use cases without adding a second sensor system.
The OPPO N1 is not a perfect flagship. The Snapdragon 600 inside is mid-cycle by December 2013, when competing devices are moving to the Snapdragon 800. The mechanical rotation mechanism raises durability questions. At 213 grams, it is heavy. But the rotating camera thesis — that selfie quality requires rear sensor quality rather than a dedicated front sensor — is a legitimate design argument that OPPO is making before “selfie camera” is a meaningful marketing category. Whether the market rewards the argument will depend on whether the mechanism proves reliable in real-world use over six months. That question is still open today.
Pete Lau’s last OPPO product is interesting hardware and a serious community play. In December, he leaves. The N1 ships without him. What follows is OnePlus, and then the decade-long story of what happens when OPPO’s most important product executive runs a competitor built on OPPO’s supply chain.
Part of OPPO: The Complete Story, my full history of OPPO from DVD players to the BBK empire.