Through a post on the company’s official forums, the Head of Mobile Products at OnePlus, Ms. Helen Li, has announced that the company will be rolling out OxygenOS 2.1.3 for its latest smartphone, the mid-ranger called OnePlus X. The phone was originally launched with OxygenOS 2.1, which is based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. According to the post from Ms. Li, the company has taken inputs from its users and has tried to incorporate their suggestions while implementing some of the new features as part of the impending update that’s set to roll out in phases. She also goes on to say that the company is “not done yet, so please expect more updates and feature additions to come in the next couple of OTAs”. Meaning, the device will be getting a few more updates coming its way soon.
As for the new features that will come as part of this imminent update, the post states that the OxygenOS team has spent quite a while “focusing on improving the user experience for SD card”. The official SD card-related changelog includes “UX improvements, exFAT SD card support, Ability to move apps to and from SD card, and Fixed reboots caused by removing SD card in an active state”. The post also mentions that the update will bring some security patches, along with “general bug fixes and optimizations”. There is however, no indication as to which vulnerabilities are being patched up by the current update, or if OnePlus will even commit itself to the monthly security update schedule from Google.
Ms. Li also reminded OnePlus X users that the OTA will be rolled out incrementally. She even went through the trouble of explaining the reason for not rushing out an OTA update on a large scale all at once, saying, “We generally start our OTA rollout with a small percent (~10%, randomly chosen) of our users to ensure that the OTA system is working correctly … in case we find any serious issues, we can contain the problem quickly and find a solution before it impacts a wider audience”. OnePlus X has been getting a lot of attention from the Chinese vendor ever since its launch, and only recently, the company announced the availability of a limited edition zirconia ceramic version of the device, which will be available at a premium over the regular version that is being shipped to users worldwide thus far.