[China Public Beta] OnePlus 3 / 3T Pie update (Android 9.0) imminent, as exec shares official screenshot

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Providing major Android version update(s) to a 3 years old phone is considered a heroic event in the Android community. To be precise, we are not talking about custom ROMs.

Very few devices outside Google’s portfolio managed to get three (or more) major updates without the help of aftermarket development support. Apple’s iOS continues to outperform the Android on smartphones in this context, thanks to their sandboxed ecosystem.

2016’s OnePlus 3 was a fabulous device from the ambitious Chinese OEM called OnePlus. Their previous flagship, i.e. OnePlus 2 was plagued by a number of hardware and software related shortcomings. With the release of OnePlus 3, OnePlus tried to regain their lost fame.

Almost 3 years after release, I should say they did it right. With OnePlus 3 (and the half-yearly refresh, dubbed as OnePlus 3T), the smartphone maker corrected most of the wrong moves and was able to set a legacy.

Another clever move from OnePlus was the decision to provide official Android 9 Pie update for this device duo. The community was truly rattled by the announcement.

https://twitter.com/getpeid/status/1023964369552592901

Since then, OnePlus decided to skip Android 8.1 for 3/3T in favor of the development of Pie. Users even surprised as well as annoyed to observe the lack of security updates since November 2018.

Lately, there were some interesting developments in this domain. Someone decided to create a mock design of the Hydrogen OS (intended for OnePlus phones in China) Pie for OnePlus 3T.

Meanwhile, OnePlus Community Manager David Y. dropped some proper hints, like the following:

In one of our previous articles, we discussed the possibility of bringing Project Treble support by the intermediary Oreo update – give it a read.

On the eve of International Women’s Day, David shared that he personally tested an engineering build of OxygenOS based on Pie for OnePlus 3 and 3T. However, he decided not to post it as there were some OTA related bugs needed to squashed away.

Not gonna lie. A beta build (or a community build whatever it called) before the official release is one of the options. The software team is working on a way to get this build to be able to receive the official Pie update thru OTA, so that users don’t have to flash builds back and forth. Let’s hope for the best.

In yesterday’s daily dose of OnePlus related news, we talked about a Chinese guy who claimed to have certain knowledge about the Pie development status for 3/3T.

Merely hours after posting the article, David shared another fascinating news:

Good news: Our software team solved the OTA issue. Currently, we are in the CTS process, which has at least 4 days to go. (We are talking about the beta build)

Stay patient and hope for the best.

Cheers!

CTS aka Compatibility Test Suite is a set of tests designed by Google to ensure the compatibility of the device firmware with certain standards. If a device fails to pass CTS, then the OEM can’t ship it with the Google Play Store and/or other Google services pre-installed.

That’s not the end! David has just posted a screenshot of the ‘About phone’ section of OnePlus 3. Guess how it looks!

According to him, the screenshot has been taken on an older (March 8) beta build of OxygenOS 9.0 beta for OnePlus 3 and 3T.

This build isn’t the latest one, I just flashed it on March 8.

The statement can be verified by examining the build number as well, which ends with ‘190308’. It tells us that this particular build was compiled on the 8th day of the 3rd month (March) of 2019. ?

We are still not sure about the status of the promised security patch update based on Android 8.0 Oreo though.

Is OnePlus going to ditch it and directly roll out the Pie beta? Can it be possible that the Pie build is part of the long-closed Open Beta branch of OnePlus 3/3T? Perhaps regular users may get a preparatory Oreo incremental build first on stable channel, and the final Pie build afterwards?

Rest assured, we will deliver everything related to the OnePlus 3 and 3T Pie update as soon as possible. Stay tuned!

Update (4 April, 2019)

OnePlus has shared the first public beta builds of Android Pie based HydrogenOS 9.0 for OnePlus 3 and 3T in China. They come with April 2019 security patch. Take a look at this thread for more info.

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