A year ago no one knew who or what OnePlus was, today it’s one of the most talked about Chinese phone companies, at least among the techie-types. Not bad for a company that’s spent almost nothing on marketing and has yet to get its product into the hands of consumers, aside from a very lucky few.

Of course, not all the talk centering around the OnePlus One has been favorable. While early reviews of the device have been fairly good, the problem lies with various PR mishaps that have happened along the way for the company. Most of the controversy has surrounded OnePlus’ invite system and the company’s inability to get the phone into the hands of folks who are actively interested in buying one.

If you are the type that is getting sick of the waiting game, you’re not going to like today’s news. Reportedly OnePlus has sent out invites to select individuals but with a small catch: the invite allows you to buy the phone now, but with the revelation that the phone won’t ship just yet. Instead, it will be shipped as soon as possible and OnePlus says it will keep the buyer updated on the progress of getting the phones out.

The reason for the delay? According to Cyanogenmod’s ciwrl, the reason centers around new issues with openSSL that were made public on June 5th. He says they decided to “include the correction for those vulnerabilities, in the factory release of the One”. Furthermore, a whole new firmware means the device needs to be re-certified.

Regardless of what happened, delays never make a company look good. It also seems a bit strange that OnePlus couldn’t have shipped the handset and then simply released an OTA firmware upgrade shortly thereafter, since they’ll have to do that for handsets that are already in the wild. It’s currently unclear how long it will take before OnePlus ships out phones purchased through the invite system, though hopefully it’s a short delay.

What do you think of OnePlus and the One? Still excited, losing interest or have you already turned your attention away from the OnePlus One almost entirely?