The Oneus One, the upcoming CyanogenMod-toting Android phone, is set to launch on starting on April 23rd online, but there’s a bit of a catch. If you want to be one of the first to get your hs on the Oneus One, you’ll need to score an invite.

The Oneus Invite System was announced yesterday in a post on the Oneus forums, it’s bound to ruffle a few feathers. The post explains just why the company has decided to make the hset invite-only, saying that it’s actually “solving a problem” by launching the hset this way. Invites will be available through friends, contests, to active participants of the Oneus forums. 

As a refresher, the Oneus One is the second Android smartphone to ship with the popular custom ROM CyanogenMod out of the box. The highly anticipated hset will ship with a 5.5 inch HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, 3GB of RAM, a 13 megapixel camera—for under $400. 

I’m not in love with the fact that the Oneus One will be invite-only at launch, despite the company’s reasoning. It’s understable why Oneus would want to ensure that those in its community have a better chance of getting a phone for which dem will almost certainly outstrip supply at launch. But at the end of the day, its end-game is to make money. Creating scarcity making users feel special by scoring invites builds hype… but making it impossible to buy such a desired product also creates ill will. 

If you’re sold on the Oneus One don’t make it the first round, you could have a while to wait until you secure the hset. th no carrier partnership to speak of, snubbed customers might want to install CyanogenMod on their existing phones. It won’t be quite the same as the customized version of the OS that will l on the Oneus One, but it might tide you over.