Christmas has come early for OnePlus 3 owners. The OxygenOS beta has reached its 8th installment and OnePlus has begun to push out the software update to users, bringing them out of the past and pushing them into the future with Android 7.0 Nougat. Since this is a software update that is being rolled out through the beta program, not all users of the OnePlus 3 are going to see the update on their device. Furthermore, the update isn’t going to be sent out as an OTA to users that are on the open beta software and it will have to be flashed using adb. Also worth noting is that since this is beta software, there are bound to be a few bugs and some things may not work.
In total so far it seems there are a few reported issues with the update, which includes things Android Pay potentially working incorrectly. If you use Android Pay on your OnePlus 3 you may want to steer clear of the update for now, or simply take your chances and risk losing the function until the problem is fixed. If you do update and you do find that Android Pay doesn’t work you could move back to a build that’s based on Android Marshmallow, but herein lies another issue as this version of the open beta won’t let users downgrade to a Marshmallow-based build directly. There are also some reported issues with stability and performance, but other than that things presumably run pretty smoothly.
As for what’s new with this version of the beta software, the glaring and most obvious change is that it introduces Android 7.0 Nougat, which in itself introduces some features and changes that are specific to this version of Android, such as the multi-window support. Also new with Nougat will be improved Doze Mode so users will have even better battery life than before. Of course, other notable features are included too, like the direct reply from notifications, which, presents users with a rather nifty method for having conversations. Some apps, like Google’s Messenger, will continue to stay persistent in the notification tray even after a direct reply making it easy to reply and talk to people without having to open the app at all, which certainly makes things quicker. OnePlus states that the settings menu and notifications also have a new design, and there’s now custom DPI support as well as status bar icon options and the ability to quick launch some third party applications. If you have a OnePlus 3 and you feel like flashing this software to push forward to Nougat, you can grab the necessary download file by heading through the button below.
OxygenOS Open Beta 8 (Android 7.0 Nougat)