OnePlus has pulled the recent open beta update for all its smartphones. The main reason for this seems to be a major battery drain issue on the devices, even though there were also some other issues, says AndroidPolice. The company has taken down the Open Beta 5 for the OnePlus 5T, Open Beta 7 for the OnePlus 5, Open Beta 24 for the OnePlus 3T and the Open Beta 33 for the OnePlus 5T. Users who are already on the buggy versions will have to wait for the company to issue an update or flash the previous stable version to remove the Open Beta build on their smartphones.
This is not the first time OnePlus has had to pull an update. Earlier this year, the company discontinued the global rollout of its OxygenOS 5.0 for the OnePlus 5. An undisclosed major bug was cited as the cause and OnePlus never revealed what the bug was or how it affected the device. The smartphone manufacturer had previously released the Android Oreo 8.1 update for beta users on the OnePlus 5 and the OnePlus 5T. The OnePlus 5 got the latest Oreo flavour with Open Beta 6 whereas for the OnePlus 5T it was rolled out with the Open Beta 4 package. The new update brings changes to the Android OS along with the February 2018 security patch. The company’s upcoming flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 6 is expected to be launched running on the latest version of OxygenOS, based upon Android 8.1 Oreo.
Speaking of the OnePlus 6, the company’s CEO and Co-founder, both have confirmed the device and have also revealed some of its design elements and specs. First off, the device will feature a notch on top of the display, which will be smaller than the iPhone X but a bit wider than the one we have seen on the Essential Phone. Both Pete Lau and Carl Pei tried to justify and defend their choice of incorporating a notch by saying that it was for providing a larger screen to its users, without compromising on the display’s quality and the components which are housed on the upper bezel.
The OnePlus 6 will be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845 and 8GB RAM, and for the first time, with 256 internal storage. The smartphone developers will also include a compatibility mode on the device, using which one will be able to hide the notch when the handset is in portrait mode and over 1000 top apps on the Play Store have also been tested with the mode, says the company. The 3.5mm audio jack is still present on the smartphone.
OnePlus recently posted a couple of videos on Twitter, teasing some new features on the OnePlus 6. As per the videos, the phone will come with gesture support and its alert slider can also have an additional function of being used for manually focusing the camera. The video where gestures are teased hints that users might get to boot an app by drawing an alphabet on the screen and swiping up and it’s speculated that there would be additional gestures like swiping up on the home screen for accessing recent apps or the app drawer and swiping down for returning to the home screen.
The caption for the second video reads, “Slide to focus with the Alert Slider”, hinting at the possibility that the alert slider might come with a feature for physically focusing the camera. In the company’s current flagship, the alert slider toggles between ring, silent and do not disturb notification modes. You can read more about it here.