Since the last few months, OnePlus loyalists have been receiving one shock after another. Right after Carl Pei’s exit, the R&D teams of Oppo and OnePlus merged. This followed with the news of Hydrogen OS being shelved and very recently the brand itself has merged into Oppo.
If that is not all, according to a OnePlus, one of its latest devices –Nord N200 5G which is launched in the US will be only getting a limited number of software updates. A report by 9to5Google states that the phone will receive only one major Android update and three years of security patches.
Since the phone ships with Android 11 out of the box, going by the above update, it is only expected to receive Android 12, slated to be released around the end of the year. If this is true, the phone won’t get any more software updates just after 6 months of its launch.
Though according to the promise made by OnePlus, the phone will get 3 years of security patches which could include bug fixes and minor updates from OnePlus apart from security patches.
Comparatively the Nord CE 5G which was released in Asian and the European markets, will fare much better than the Nord N200 5G. TechRadar India got a clarification from OnePlus that the “Nord CE will receive two years of software updates and three years of security updates to keep the phone smooth over time.”
Will switching to ColorOS help?
While the logic behind this differentiation is best known to the company, however, the company that was once known for quick software updates has been struggling with what was once its USP. Quite a few flagship devices including the OnePlus 7 and 8 series either got the OS updates fairly late or were reportedly buggy impacting the performance of the phone.
That being said, the predecessors of the OnePlus Nord N200 - N10 and N100 weren’t as lucky as the Nord N200 and only got one OS update while the security patches were released miserly. Looking at this scenario, users are hoping that OnePlus adopts ColorOS instead of OxygenOS after the merger which will offer better software support for their devices.
Talking about the competition, Samsung has improved considerably when it comes to software updates. In fact, the South Korean tech giant promised three years of Android OS updates to its flagship Galaxy S series devices (starting from Galaxy S10 and newer), Galaxy Note series, Galaxy Z series, Galaxy A series and some budget and mid-range Galaxy M series phones.
Xiaomi normally offers at least a couple of Android OS updates and up to four MIUI updates for its premium devices while the mid-ranged Redmi devices generally get one Android update and up to four MIUI updates. Similarly, other brands like Vivo and Oppo have only pledged regular software updates for some of their flagship devices.
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