OnePlus unveiled the OnePlus 5T last week and the phone has received rave reviews in the few days it has been on the market.
While it’s true the OnePlus 5T falls short in a few areas, namely the display screen resolution, wireless charging and waterproofing, the lack of Android Oreo out of the box is the worst mistake OnePlus did and it’s doing nothing at all to make amends.
In a new update, the company has confirmed that OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 3T and the OG OnePlus 3 will all be updated to Android 8.1 Oreo. However, this update will leave out one of the most essential parts of Oreo – Project Treble.
With Project Treble, OEMs will be able to speed up the process of rolling out software updates, which means devices that will support the feature will be receiving updates more often and faster than before. Given that OnePlus 5T and co will not have this feature even after the update to Android 8.1 Oreo, it means that software updates will still be handled in the same manner as the case of Nougat. Looking at how poor adoption of new Android operating systems has been over the years, Project Treble is seen as the game changer, but not for current OnePlus phones.
One major reason OnePlus 5T and other OnePlus phones won’t support Project Treble is that they don’t come with Android Oreo out of the box, which is one of the basic requirements. On the contrary, there are other OEMs that will be adding Treble to their devices through an update to Oreo, namely Google and the OG Pixels as well as Essential and the PH-1. With this in mind, it seems OnePlus is simply not up to the task, which is quite unfortunate.
On the brighter side, you’ll at least get Android 8.1 Oreo OTA, but the same cannot be guaranteed with respect to 2018’s Android P.