OnePlus has been under fire yet again recently for bricking the OnePlus 9 and 10 Pro motherboards with software updates. The firm acknowledged the issue by speaking to The Hindu and said it’s “committed to resolving” it. However, the company seems to have taken a weird trajectory by ensuring no one can download the latest firmware update files for their OnePlus devices, essentially killing a popular third-party app called Oxygen Updater in the process.
OnePlus seems to have pulled all the OxygenOS ROM/firmware files of all devices from their servers, rendering the Oxygen Updater app useless, and leaving thousands of Custom ROM users on OnePlus devices stuck with their favorite third-party ROMs.
It was first reported on the OnePlus 12 / 11 Series Telegram group that OnePlus is locking downloads via HTTP so that no third-party apps or users can download the firmware for OnePlus devices.
Is OnePlus Changing Its Policy?
It is possible that OnePlus is changing its policy regarding downloading firmware to prevent users from installing updates as soon as they’re available by using apps such as Oxygen Updater.
However, we might be overthinking, and this is just a technical issue on OnePlus’ side. We hope the latter is the case, but the former could very well be the case and not a coincidence.
If OnePlus has indeed changed its policy around downloading OTAs and full ROMs, this doesn’t bode well for a firm that started its journey with a Custom ROM and has always been in support of third-party ROMs.
Again, it’s too soon to jump the train on this issue. We’ll keep tabs on it and update this article so keep an eye out.
What Does This Mean for Your OnePlus Device?
If you’re someone who always waits for a few weeks or months for the official OTA update to hit your device and doesn’t care about Custom ROMs, it doesn’t mean anything.
If you’re quick as lightning to manually install new updates by downloading the Firmware, or via the Oxygen Updater app, you will now have to wait until OnePlus officially pushes the update to your device.
What are your thoughts on OnePlus axing third-party apps and preventing users from downloading firmware for their OnePlus devices? Let us know in the comments.