OnePlus Android 10 updates have rolled out to 4 smartphones on the Chinese company’s update schedule, and the first one started rolling out 3 weeks after Google released Android 10.
If you want the fasted Android updates for your smartphone, a Google Pixel or Essential phone is your best bet. Those two brands get updates pushed to them right on the very day the software is released. Outside those two brands, your next best bet used to be Nokia. You might have to wait some months, but the update would get to you. Anyone who loves software updates know how unpleasant it can be having to wait for months. Which is probably why a plucky smartphone maker from China has stepped up to push Nokia down the ladder.
After the launch of Android 10, it took only three weeks for the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro to begin to receive the update. That, ladies and gentlemen, was absolutely fantastic. Three weeks.
And then in December 2019, barely a month after, older OnePlus devices – 6 and 6T, began receiving the Android 10 update as well. This is amazing work by OnePlus.
By way of contrast, Nokia, who had been hailed as the champion of timely Android OS updates, pushed Android 10 to its first device to be updated in November. The Nokia 8.1 was that first Nokia smartphone to get updated. And it took another month for the next one. Android 10 update started rolling out to Nokia 9 PureView in December 2019.
According to Nokia’s Android 10 update schedule, the next smartphone to get updated will be the Nokia 7.1 and that will happen in December 2019. Everyone else on the schedule can expect to get Android 10 in early 2020.
Nokia is not rolling out Android 10 as fast as OnePlus is, and that is interesting because OnePlus phones have a custom user interface, OxygenOS, that has to be customized, while Nokia phones run stock Android. One wonders how OnePlus is able to pull off their customizations and testings so fast that they have four smartphones updated already.
The appeal of OnePlus Android 10 Updates
It is true that as far as visual appeal is concerned, OxygenOS is as close to stock Android OS as any custom UI can be. But visuals are only a part of the customizations. OxygenOS has plenty of features and tweaks baked into it, and those require time to put in place so they work seamlessly with an update.
It is true that Nokia has many more phones in its portfolio than OnePlus has, but that isn’t the issue here. The issue here is speed of rollout, which is crucial to every smartphone brand’s core fanbase. As far as I am concerned, there is no technically valid reason why the Nokia 9 PureView should not receive the Android 10 update the very day that Pixel and Essential phones did. All of them run stock Android afterall. But it has taken two months after Pixel and Essential smartphones got updated that the Nokia 9 is just getting a taste.
OnePlus fans must be ecstatic. The phone’s fanbase has been mostly the techie, geeky kind, and that class of users love their updates like the English love their tea, and Germans their beer. If anything, this superfast rollout of Android 10 has endeared them more to their favourite brand. Hopefully, OnePlus will keep this up.
One can only hope that Nokia will rise to this challenge and attempt to do better in 2020 with Android 11. Stock Android is good, but using stock Android OS in their phones should give them an edge in update rollout speed. So far, they have let fans down. Nokia still has the overall edge in that it guarantees 2 years of Android version updates and 3 years of security patches for all its smartphones. Not even OnePlus has made such a guarantee.
But as far as rollout speed is concerned, the Finnish smartphone maker is leaving core fans disappointed. By the end of 2019, only three older Nokia phones will be running Android 10, namely: Nokia 8.1, Nokia 9, and Nokia 7.1. In contrast, four OnePlus phones have it already, and a final one, OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, will be getting updated in early 2020.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
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