Oneplus has always been a company of the fans. From its launch on 23 April 2014, it has tried to provide features and devices that resonated well with the audience, and that made it one of the largest premium market shareholders in many parts around the world. This has created an image of OnePlus as being a brand that is for the masses and by the masses. But when a brand has such an image, certain decisions that they make might not go well with the audience.
From increasing the prices of their phones steadily and thus becoming a flagship from a flagship killer or removing the headphone jack from all devices, OnePlus 6t onwards. OnePlus has made many decisions that were not appreciated by its fans.
Now according to some reports, OnePlus is going to restrict features like DC dimming, RAM boost and other useful features to their most recent models. Though some of these features are available for older phones in beta software, it is highly unlikely that they will make it to the stable build of the software. OnePlus is a company that has a high reputation for its Oxygen OS in its mobile devices and therefore it is kind of disappointing to see these features left out on the older machines.
The popular developer community XDA has also provided insights on this news. According to them, there is an official confirmation that the devices Oneplus 5 and OnePlus 5t won’t be getting the very useful RAM boost feature. The feature was supposed to come to Oneplus 5, but now it’s supposed to be left out on the OnePlus 5 series and older.
The devices Oneplus 3 and 3t are also left out off the list and despite the promise by Oneplus that these devices will receive the caller identification features and Android pie there is no news about any updates from them till now. Also, note that these devices have crossed their update period, so it is highly unlikely for them to receive any significant updates.
Oneplus 6 and 6t are also not going to receive the DC dimming feature. According to Oneplus, it is due to the hardware limitations on the devices. But both these devices received a feature called the screen-enhancement in July 2019.
Though OnePlus is cutting down on features on the older models, it is trying to bring more useful features for its newer models. For example, with the launch of the new version of Oxygen OS the company has brought scheduled dark mode, always-on display and many UI changes. We will most likely see these features trickle down at least a generation or maybe two. It is also supposed to bring the One-handed mode in the Oneplus 7 series of devices.
Though as fans, we always wish for getting the best features and software updates on our older devices it is also not entirely wrong for a company to stop giving updates to an almost 3-4 year old generation device. And you can always find custom ROMs with the latest features on XDA developers site for generation old OnePlus devices.
