OnePlus promises 5 years of updates from 2023 onwards
About 1.5 years ago, OnePlus introduced a new software maintenance schedule. In that new maintenance schedule, they announced that they will merge OnePlus' and OPPO's codebase "to improve efficiency and standardisation". Another big change they announced was that the OnePlus 8-series and newer will receive three major Android updates and four years of security updates.
Today, on the 30th of November 2022, OnePlus announced a new change in their software update policy: some devices (likely premium devices, so excluding Nord-devices) that will be launched in 2023 will receive four major Android updates and five years of security patches. Now that OnePlus made this promise, it will be able to compete with Samsung regarding the software support policy. The announcement has been done OxygenOS 13 Media Roundtable. Androidworld, a Dutch Android news website, attended the Media Roundtable, where analyst Ben Wood questioned Gary Chen (head Software Products) regarding OnePlus' operating system. OnePlus has also formally announced this change in a thread on their forums, and they probably talked about the changes on the Open Ears Forum (OEF) in London as well. Extending the software support policy to five years is because customers are more aware of durability and thus want to keep their phone longer before buying a new one.
Besides extending the software support policy to five years, OnePlus revealed more information about OxygenOS 13, 13.1 and OxygenOS 14. According to OnePlus, OxygenOS 13 is faster thanks to the 'AI Systembooster'. Apps should install about 20% faster and opening them should be 10% faster. When using apps, the algorithm learns and will be able to know when you use a specific app the most, at the time of the day. So in case if you're gaming every day at 8pm, it'll soft-mute resources except the game you're playing around 8pm.
Gary Chen also revealed more about Always-on-Display (AOD) in OxygenOS 13; OnePlus entered a partnership with Spotify, so that title and artist information is shown on the AOD mode. The new AOD-implementation also adds a dynamic mode that gets triggered based on the current temperature of your location.
Furthermore, OnePlus says they want to focus on a calming design. The colours need to be vivid and the fonts should make you feel happy, according to OnePlus. They also claim that due to the corona pandemic, people feel the need to get calmed and that these new icons and fonts help calming you down.
According to Androidworld.nl, OnePlus is the first manufacturer to add spatial audio, which has been developed in cooperation with Google. The use-case of spatial audio is to create audio from multiple dimensions. This includes being able to hear where the sound is going to, as well as the quality and 'dynamic tracking'.
Furthermore, OnePlus said that OxygenOS 13.1 will be released in the first half of 2023. This update should bring an improved version of 'Private Safe' that has been introduced in OxygenOS 13. For disabled people, features will be added to help them in certain challenging situations. Another thing that will receive improvements is the multimedia experience; Gallery will receive various improvements that have not been exactly specified. Software optimisations in general are also part of the improvements. In the future, for example with OxygenOS 14, OnePlus says they'll be looking at the current situation in the world and according to that, adjust the experience in OxygenOS (for example, the corona pandemic in combination with fonts and icons, as explained earlier.)
Google and OnePlus also now work closer together regarding Android. OnePlus says they're taking design, marketing and the technical aspect into consideration when a new Android version has been announced by Google. They'll be adjusting OxygenOS based on the location; for example, Indian users have other needs than European users, which is why OnePlus can disable/enable certain features for a specific region.
Credits for the images go to Androidworld.nl