Oppo’s flagship N1 smartphone went on sale globally for the first time on December 10, but the version everybody wants — that’s the one that comes with CyanogenMod 10.2 pre-installed — wasn’t available from day one. Oppo has today announced, however, that it will be available on December 24 — just in time for Christmas.

Oppo was waiting for the N1 to pass Google’s compatibility test suite (CTS) process, which gives it access to Google’s official Android apps — including the Google Play Store. Without this, the company would have had to launch the N1 without a Play Store — or build its own — and users would have had to side-load their applications.

It was certainly worth waiting for that before launching the CyanogenMod variant, then — even if it means you won’t quite get the N1 in time for Christmas.

The N1 becomes the first phone with CyanogenMod to have been certified by Google, “which marks a major milestone for everyone” involved in the project, said CyanogenMod developer Abhisek Devkota. “This has been something a long time in the making, ever since CM 4.0.4.”

It’s unclear how much this N1 variant will cost, but it’s expected to come with the same $599 price tag (€499 in Europe) as the original model. That gets you a 5.9-inch 1080p display, a quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, a 13-megapixel camera, and 2GB of RAM.

• SourceCyanogenMod
• ViaEngadget