OnePlus 5, 5T Get Support For Project Treble With The Latest OxygenOS

OnePlus has been in the news of late for more than just the OnePlus 6. The company recently promised three years of service for every OnePlus smartphone. This includes software updates for 2 years and an extended year of security patches. The company has now taken a step further by including support for Project Treble in the latest OxygenOS Beta update for the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T.

OnePlus 5

OnePlus has been publically sceptical about Project Treble. No OnePlus smartphone, up until now, supported Project Treble. In one of its AMAs (As Me Anything), OnePlus explained that the possibility of customers’ devices becoming bricked was too much of a risk. It even confirmed that the OnePlus 5 and 5T would not receive this feature.

Partitions were not required for Android N and previous versions of Android, all of our current devices do not feature a partition. According to our tests, if we were to modify the partition layout via OTA there is a risk that devices will brick during the partitioning.

Project Treble is Google’s effort at reducing the time it takes for OEMs to receive the new OS and optimise it for its devices and then push out the update. A few months ago, Android received a new Vendor Interface, which is largely what Project Treble is about. The VI’s aim is to separate the “Vendor Implementation” (that is, “the device-specific, lower-level software written in large part by the silicon manufacturers”), from the Android OS framework.

OnePlus 5T

The new VI is supposed to sit between the Android OS framework and Vendor Implementation. And the new VI will be validated by a Vendor Test Suite (VTS), which is analogous to the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) that Google has been using for API testing of apps. The VTS ensures forward-compatibility of the VI.

Software updates for major Android smartphone makers like Samsung have been painstakingly few and far between. With Project Treble, Google wants to shorten that process. OnePlus now, appears to be onboard with Google’s initiative and is definitely a good news for OnePlus users. This also means that future smartphone owners have another reason to consider buying a OnePlus device since not many smartphone makers are known for providing timely software updates.