Cyanogen to Focus on CM12.1 Development; Releases Final CM11, CM12 Snapshots

The CyanogenMod community has started rolling out final snapshot releases of both CyanogenMod 11 and CyanogenMod 12.0 for compatible smartphones. The company has also revealed that it will shift focus to the next build named CM12.1 based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop (specifically the Android 5.1.1_r5 build released on Wednesday), and that this means the CM11.0 and CM12.0 snapshot builds will be the final releases.

The team explains that the final snapshot release for CM11 has been released considering several users are still using the CM11 build. "Why another CM11 build? Rather surprisingly, many users have been slow to upgrade to L - whether due to the lack of a snapshot release or adverse reaction to the Material design, we don't know. The meagre stats that we have shown that there is a rather large contingency of users who are sticking to CM11 as their release channel of choice, so we felt compelled to give a release showcasing all the work that went into that branch to make it ship ready," said the team.

Some of the compatible devices for which CM11 and CM12.0 final snapshots are available include Google Nexus 7, HTC One M8, LG G2 (Sprint), Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, and Sony Xperia Z Ultra among others.

The CyanogenMod community also advised users who have shifted to CM 12.1 nightly to not downgrade to these builds.

The team adding further notes that nightlies and weeklies for CM11 and CM12.0 branches will be slowly phased out with Android M's entry to nightlies. However, no estimated release date has been announced.

The community believes that CM11 bug issues won't be massive while considering CM12.0 has code base similar to CM12.1 - "the bug likely impacts both branches if present."