I'll be blunt—it's been a long time since I've cared about the availability of CyanogenMod nightlies. It's not that I have anything against flashing custom ROMs. It's just in the past several years, stock Android has been pretty good. Even the skinned versions like HTC Sense have reached a point where I feel fine leaving them alone.

But then I got a Moto E, and only a month later, Motorola announced that it didn't have any plans to upgrade the phone to Marshmallow. Sure, it's a cheap little handset, but it's one I like very much. It's small enough to fit nicely in my pockets, it's comfortable to hold, the battery life is great, and non-Verizon models come with virtually no branding. Please don't tell me it's reaching end of life already.

Well, now CyanogenMod has released 12.1 nightly builds for the 4G LTE version of the Moto E (codenamed surnia). This comes just over a month after the project started making builds for the 3G-only version known as otus.

To be clear, CyanogenMod 12.1 comes with Lollipop, not Marshmallow. But at least there's hope.