OnePlus switched from HyrdrogenOS to ColorOS for its smartphones in China with the launch of the OnePlus 9 series. The company has also planned to update its older devices to new ColorOS for OnePlus operating system. Keeping up with its words, the brand has released ColorOS 11 ‘Early Access’ builds for OnePlus 8, 8 Pro, and 8T.
OnePlus is known for its operating system, which is called OxygenOS in international markets and HydrogenOS in China. But now, the brand has abandoned HydrogenOS in its home county in favor of ColorOS for OnePlus.
With the decline of Huawei’s smartphone business, OPPO and vivo have been gradually filling the void left by the telecom giant in China. To further push its devices, the Oujia group has been unifying OPPO and OnePlus since last year.
We think the shift to ColorOS on OnePlus smartphones is part of Oujia’s strategy to bump up OnePlus’s market share in China. With ColorOS for OnePlus, the sale of OnePlus devices could improve as HyrdrogenOS is not popular in China. The consumers in this country prefer feature-rich UI with ecosystem benefits.
But unfortunately, the transition process will not be easy for older devices because ColorOS and HydrogenOS are completely different Android skins. Hence, interested users will have to use Windows 10 PC to install the newly released ColorOS 11 Early Access builds on OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro, and OnePlus 8T respectively.
That’s not all, these builds are also said to have a plethora of known bugs. Since OnePlus is lately known for software issues, there could be plenty more unknown bugs.
If you are using a Chinese variant of any of three smartphones, you can try out ColorOS 11 by following the installation process mentioned in the official announcement posts on OnePlus Community China (1, 2). But do proceed with caution due to the risks involved.
Having said that, we are not sure how OnePlus will be delivering stable update via OTA to general users. What are your thoughts on this situation? Do let us known in the comment section below.
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