The OnePlus X, the newest member of the OnePlus family, has barely even released and it’s already receiving its first update. Whether this is a sign of trouble or of good support from OnePlus well into the future, it’s a bit too early to tell. The little OnePlus that could hasn’t exactly steamrolled the competition in public popularity, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great deal or hasn’t sold well. It’s using the same invite system as previous handsets, which OnePlus came out and admitted is being used to slow growth down a bit to keep things manageable.
All that said, the first OTA has begun rolling out, bringing some camera and HDR optimizations, battery life tweaks to aid that underwhelmingly sized cell, home and lock wallpaper orientation tweaks and a number of under the hood tweaks that weren’t listed. For some early adopters, the OTA came in a 160MB part and a 17MB part after rebooting, but future rollouts should have it all as one package to download and install, cutting down on install time and at least a little on how much the device will heat up during the update process. Our source reported the phone got a bit hot under the collar during the first update and even more so when the second one came immediately after, but cooled to normal levels during use. Apparently, there have been no related anomalies to report just yet.
This update doesn’t change the Android version or bring any new apps and software, so it should be a fairly easy rollout for all variants in all markets. Interestingly, the Hydrogen OS and Oxygen OS versions of the device should both receive the update in the same time frame with little to no variant-specific tweaks, however there are ways to convert to Oxygen OS, should a Hydrogen OS user decide to do so. This kind of flexibility and support sounds great on paper, but it could easily create a software and support nightmare down the road, especially if the phone takes off. Hopefully, given OnePlus’ history and the normal wave of adoption for these devices, that won’t be the case.