OnePlus has announced that it will offer regular updates of the Android operating system, much like Google does with its Pixel devices. This is a rare commitment from a phone company that the competition would do well to learn from. What does that mean for you?
Essentially that means anyone with a OnePlus 6, 5T, 5, 3T or 3 will be updated with two years of major software updates plus security patches – from the release date of the phone. That includes the latest Android P which is due out later this year.
The security updates will run longer, for a three year period where these will be delivered every two months in that final year. This policy almost exactly matches what Google delivers to its Pixel devices. OnePlus won't be quite as quick but should be close.
OnePlus has been very good at keeping its users up to date with the latest Android updates as its devices have very minimal OxygenOS software on top of the stock Android experience. This is why a lot of people love to use OnePlus – that and the high spec for low price offering, of course.
By comparison the larger named competition take months to roll out updates and generally do this without a schedule. Even when these roll-out they are often staggered as they trickle out to some devices before others.
Since this update policy takes effect from the release date of the phones, OnePlus 3 and 3T users will lose support of stable updates by November 2018 and security updates by November 2019.
