Oneplus

Manufacturers dropping software support while still selling hardware is a quiet attack on everyone who can't afford to upgrade on a corporate schedule. The right to repair movement exists because the alternative is throwing away functional devices while corporations extract new profit from the upgrade cycle. Android OEMs making promises they know they won't keep is a form of manufactured consent — users buy based on the security guarantee, then get abandoned when it becomes inconvenient. Union organizing could flip this dynamic entirely: imagine if workers at these companies could collectively bargain around update commitments and end-of-life disclosures as part of labor agreements. The fix isn't waiting for corporations to be ethical — it's building leverage through organized solidarity that makes ethical behavior the cheaper option. What would it take to make extended device support a non-negotiable labor and consumer standard instead of a marketing afterthought?

OxygenOS 15 dropped parallel apps and the work profile partition without warning, and the response from the community was immediate. Users reported losing functionality they relied on daily, and the replies from OnePlus amounted to "trust us, it's better now." That answer has never been good enough from any OEM and it shouldn't start here.

Custom ROM development on OnePlus hardware has gotten harder with each generation as the boot chain locks down further. The argument that locked bootloaders protect users from security threats falls apart when you notice that same threat model permits carrier bloatware to persist untouched. Nobody protecting you, just limiting what you can do with your own hardware.

The "never settle" slogan feels like a punchline now. Each release removes something instead of adding it. Screen-off gestures vanish. The shelf gets rebranded and buried. The bootloader remains locked on carrier variants despite years of community requests. At some point the pattern stops being coincidence.

OnePlus is not unique in this. Most Android OEMs treat customization as a feature to phase out rather than a reason people buy their hardware. The difference is that OnePlus built its early reputation on being different, which makes the retreat more visible and the disappointment more acute. When a company starts from a position of claimed openness, closing down hurts more than if it never opened at all.

Support windows vary wildly across carrier and unlocked variants of the same device. Users who bought an unlocked OnePlus 12 expecting uniform updates got a different experience depending on where they purchased it. That fragmentation punishes people for trying to make an informed purchase. When did buying a phone require reading the fine print on your carrier's update agreement?

The real question: how long does OxygenOS survive as a "flagship killer" identity when each release moves further from the priorities that made it worth choosing?

#TechLiberation #FOSS #Privacy #Android #OxygenOS

Hi! The Oxygen 16 OTA rendered the touchscreen on my 12 Pro unusable and it took weeks to qualify me for repair return, then their service contractor had the phone for a month without communication, then they shipped it back without packing material in a smashed box left outdoors in double-digit-below-zero weather without labeling warning not to do that, and they had removed and retained the SIM tray rendering the phone inoperable in any event. I had to buy a third party SIM tray, then mine arrived back from them after weeks of numerous unanswered emails, followed by an offer of a $10 gift voucher. On balance, entirely awful experience.

I live in a remote, rural area where being without reliable communication is death-defying.

That was about three weeks ago and now the same thing is happening: the touchscreen is becoming unresponsive. I can turn the display off but it only comes on after random number of attempts. I could shut down to bootloader (I think? I get that confused with Recovery. It's the one with language selection.) but then I can't get it to properly reboot because that too requires a tap.

When I can get it to reboot the touchscreen sometimes works fine for awhile (a shrinking while). But sometimes not. Attempting to reboot is taking up a large part of my day.

Thinking of a Pixel 10; any thoughts?

Any strongly-held suggestions, particularly on my backup/restore options, going to a different phone?

Very sad to leave OnePlus. We have had several. I feel they owe me a new phone. I'd be happy with a reconditioned 12 or up, if it just worked. But I am not envisioning that likelihood.