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LineageOS 17.1 adds official support for OnePlus 2, Moto X Play, and other phones
Android 10 on phones from 2015
LineageOS is the most popular custom ROM around, and version 17.1 is based on the newest Android 10 release. The Lineage project has been slowly updating older devices to 17.1, and in the time since our previous coverage, even more devices have arrived in the official roster.
As 2019 ends and we enter a new decade, I felt the story of OnePlus deserved a bit more examination. In an email interview with CMO Kyle Kiang, I probed the history of a company that is often as shocking in its successes as it is in its marketing misfires. As it crests its sixth year as a smartphone vendor, it's more competitive than ever, coming a long way from the days when it could barely manage to build enough $349 OnePlus Ones using a tightly controlled and very annoying invitation system.
LineageOS is one of the most popular custom Android ROMs available, with over two million active installations. The project officially ended support for the 14.1 (Android 7.1) branch a few days ago, in preparation for LineageOS 16. The 16.0 branch is finally rolling out, and it's bringing Android 9 Pie to dozens of phones and tablets.
OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei took to Twitter yesterday to remind us of an important anniversary—it's the company's fifth anniversary. Yes, it was just five short years ago that we started seeing the roguish and somewhat tiresome "Never Settle" slogan plastered all over social media. I will admit to some early skepticism of the company, but here we are five years later, and the OnePlus 6T is Android Police's phone of the year.
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- LineageOS 15.1 builds for the Pixel C (dragon), Nexus 6 (shamu), and OnePlus 2 (oneplus2) are now available to download.
After much anticipation, LineageOS 15.1 (based on Android 8.1) was announced last month. Only a handful of devices had official 15.1 builds at the start, but over time, more have been moved up to Oreo. The Nexus Player, OnePlus One, and Oppo Find 7 were recently added to the roster - and now three more devices are coming.
Analytics data is important for any software project. The data can help developers figure out what features people use, what bugs need to be fixed, and what/where the target market is. OnePlus, in its never-ending mission to make itself the worst Android phone manufacturer on the planet, has been discovered collecting massive amounts of analytics data from phone owners. The collected data includes IMEI numbers, MAC addresses, mobile network names and IMSI prefixes, serial numbers, and more.
For having the slogan, "Never settle," the OnePlus 2 has caused owners to settle for less quite often. The phone itself wasn't well-received, due to the lack of NFC connectivity and other problems. And despite initially promising Android 7.0 Nougat for the OP2, there have been no releases or further news, leaving owners annoyed to say the least.
The OnePlus 3 and 3T were some of the best phones of last year, especially given their low prices. Both phones were updated to Nougat at the end of 2016, being among the first non-Google devices to receive the new version. Unfortunately, OnePlus has yet to update the OnePlus 2 or OnePlus X to Nougat, and isn't communicating with customers.
It's been a few months, but OnePlus is again updating its 2015 flagship to a new version of the OxygenOS software, v3.5.5. The OTA brings a slew of new things, the most notable being VoLTE support. This update comes with a few caveats, which we'll get into after the changelog.
CyanogenMod 14.1 nightlies have been rolling out for more than a week now and bringing Android 7.1 to several devices including Nexuses and other phones and tablets that don't have the official update yet and likely won't for many more months.
OnePlus 2 owners, be on the look out for a new update. The 2016 Flagship Killer is receiving OxygenOS 3.1.0, which is rolling out incrementally starting today.
If the Galaxy S7 deal from yesterday was out of your budget, you might wanna take a look at this one. The OnePlus 2 isn't the Shenzhen-based company's top dog anymore, but it's still a pretty decent smartphone. Now, you can pick one up in new condition from an eBay seller with 99.3% feedback on over 110k ratings for just $240.
For a phone that was supposed to "kill" high-priced flagships, the OnePlus 2 seems to have taken its sweet old time in upgrading to the latest version of Android. Whether that has to do with a smaller development team over at OnePlus, or the idiosyncrasies of the company's custom "Oxygen OS" ROM, we couldn't say. But it appears that the wait is finally over: according to a post on the OnePlus user forum, the Oxygen OS 3.0.2 over-the-air release (based on Marshmallow 6.0.1 code) is heading out today.
Fans of the community-created CyanogenMod ROM, your cup runneth over with new gadgets to try out on CM 13 (based on Android 6.0 code). Five new phones and a tablet have been given the nightly treatment in the last week or so, to wit: the OnePlus 2, the Moto X Pure (the US multi-carrier variant of the Moto X Style), Yu's low-priced Yureka, the Oppo R5 and R5s, and the original version of Sony's Xperia Tablet Z. They're all available at their respective download locations under CM's somewhat nebulous device codenames.
The OnePlus 3 is coming. So do you start saving up money to buy the latest device? You could... or you can do your budget a favor and grab one of the company's existing devices. OnePlus has just dropped the prices for all three of its phones.
Most flagship phones from last year have gotten their Marshmallow updates by this point, but not the OnePlus 2. Technically, it's not a flagship—it's a flagship killer. OnePlus took time out from killing flagships in March to release a community build (beta) of Marshmallow for the OP2, and now there's an update to that in the form of OxygenOS 3.0.1. Guess what, it's still just a community build.
OnePlus launched the OnePlus 2 last year with Lollipop, and there it has stayed all through the launch of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Some of the more established OEMs have already gotten 6.0 updates out the door (even those that have to go through carriers). Now it's almost OP's turn to update devices to Marshmallow. There's a beta for OxygenOS 3.0, which is based on Marshmallow. You can install it right now, if you like.
OnePlus doesn't ship its phones with plain vanilla Android. They run OxygenOS. No matter. It's Android, and what people want from the over-the-air updates remain the latest version. Right now that's Marshmallow.
OnePlus has been hounded pretty regularly in recent months by anxious OP2 owners wondering when Marshmallow is coming. Well, there's an OTA starting to roll out today and... it's not Marshmallow. Still Android 5.1, sorry. It does, however, bring RAW support to the camera, new security patches, and other little fixes.
OnePlus has been trying to get its ducks in a row for the past few months, slowly fixing most of the issues people have had with its ordering and shipping process by no longer requiring invites to buy phones and providing free shipping on orders above $100. Now it's back with another enticing reason to buy its OnePlus 2: a $40 price drop.