OnePlus Nord N10 5G & N100 added to Android Enterprise Recommended program

We wonder if future OnePlus devices will always be a part of this program
OneNormalUsername

The OnePlus Nord N10 5G and N100 have been announced by OnePlus in late October 2020. Both devices were initially exclusive to European Union, then made their way to North America market in January 2021, along with their carrier variants (T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile). Although the OnePlus 8T was launched in October 2020 too with OxygenOS 11 available out of the box, the N10 5G and the N100 shipped with the previous iteration of OnePlus' skin, OxygenOS 10. Unfortunately, they are only eligible to receive one major update to Android 11 along with two years of security patches -a concern which sadly along many others has not been addressed by OnePlus on its own forums.

That being said, so far security patches have been delivered quite regularly, almost every month for the N10 while OnePlus' official commitment in 2018 was to deliver patches every two months. In fact, the N10 was even the first OnePlus device to receive February 2021 security patches, which was a nice surprise.

Even more surprising, the N10 and the N100 made their way to Android Enterprise Recommended program sometime those last two weeks, joining the 8-series and the regular Nord

What is that Android Enterprise Recommended Program about?

For reference, AER program started in February 2018, but initially included few devices whilst as of writing 282 are a part of it. While this news may not matter much to average consumers, we believed it was worth publishing for owners of the N10 and N100 using their device for work purposes, as some companies (e.g. Google) may not allow devices to join their internal network if they do not abide to several requirements, one of them being security patches being delivered within 90 days of their announcement.

You can find below the requirements for Android 10 devices divided into different categories :

  • Knowledge Worker Devices
    • Minimum hardware requirements: 2GB RAM, 32GB storage, 64-bit architecture, etc.
    • At least one major Android version updates should be delivered
    • Security updates should be delivered within 90 days of their release from Google
  • Rugged Devices
    • Minimum hardware requirements: 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, IP54 & MIL-STD-810G or IEC 62-2-32 certified, etc.
    • At least one major Android version update should be delivered
      Future major Android updates must be available to all AER devices within 18 months of the board support package drop from vendors such as SOC one. This also applies to carrier variants.
    • Security updates should be delivered within 90 days of release from Google, for at least 5 years from launch date of device

Although this may appear minor, it is worth noting that AER page for both N10 and N100 indicates they are available in APAC (Asia and Pacific) whilst OnePlus never made publicity about that on their forums. Upon verification, the N100 is not available in any of the countries listed as being part of APAC on OnePlus website, however the N10 is available in Hong-Kong, Thailand Vietnam and Singapore. We will reach out to OnePlus' PR for clarification and update this article accordingly, so check back in a few days.