OnePlus announced the Closed Beta initiative for the OnePlus 7 series yesterday, which is basically the first stepping stone towards the Open Beta channel. Currently OnePlus 5/5T as well as OnePlus 6/6T are part of Open Beta, but they did start their journey with similar closed beta builds.
The Open Beta channel is ideal for end users to get the first taste of upcoming features. The Shenzhen based OEM also integrated a dedicated feedback tool with OxygenOS, so that beta participants could seamlessly upload their feedback and crash reports.
With the introduction of the feedback tool, log capturing is automated. You no longer need to manually capture logs or wait for a bug hunter to share instructions on what logs need to be captured. Depending on the type of bug, the feedback tool automatically captures the required logs.
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As a matter of fact, the latest Open Beta of OxygenOS brought plenty of improvements for the stock Weather, Phone and Screen Recorder apps in OnePlus 6 and 6T. The OTA update started to hit the devices from June 25 night, while OnePlus’ Manu J. officially announced it yesterday.
As expected, OnePlus 5 and 5T users are now receiving a new set of Open Beta updates (OB35/OB33), with a similar changelog as the OnePlus 6/6T. There is a major difference though, as the long-anticipated Zen Mode feature is finally here for the OnePlus 5/5T users.
FYI, Zen Mode was rolled out to OnePlus 6/6T users via late-May Open Beta update. Although you can always sideload the APK manually, OnePlus shared a public knowledge base article to warn users about potential incompatibilities of the action.
After checking with the team, the reasons are that current Screen Recorder and Zen Mode are only compatible with the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro and are not fully integrated with previous models. If you install these apps on other phone models, you may face some issues while using it. We recommend that you do not install and use the 2 applications until we fit them to the OnePlus 5/5T/6/6T.
Screen Recorder, Fnatic mode and Digital Wellbeing are some of the hardware independent features of OxygenOS 9.5 from OnePlus series, which are already available on older OnePlus phones via Open Beta since mid of June.
Now that Zen Mode is finally backported, OnePlus decided to shut down the Open Beta channel for OnePlus both OnePlus 5 and 5T. Yes, you heard that right – no more public beta builds for OnePlus 5/5T!
Both OnePlus 3 and 3T faced the similar treatment when OnePlus decided to push them to long term support. Long before the stable Android Pie update, OnePlus gradually closed down the beta channel for both devices.
Call it a coincidence, but the ending of beta channel for OnePlus 5/5T and the promise to provide Android Q OTA for them nicely sync with the trend.
Thanks to our collaboration with the Oxygen Updater community, the download links of the full update packages can be found below:
- Open Beta 35 for OnePlus 5: Download (MD5: e4cfe12b8ac3cabc02cc28794ccc5d07)
- Open Beta 33 for OnePlus 5T: Download (MD5: b62ca2d674c944628376876ccd6cce89)
We have also included the download links of the rollback packages which can be useful to revert back to stable OxygenOS for further updates. Be sure to backup your data (including files in the internal storage) as they will wipe your phone in the process of reverting.
When do you think OnePlus will rollout Android Q for OnePlus 5/5T? Let us know your thoughts by commenting below.
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