The phone received an OxygenOS version 5.1.0 that is based on the Android 8.1. in reality this is a mild skin on top of the Android 8.1 OS. The final software was released after one month of beta tasting and it works just fine.
Android updates have been one of the major issues with Android based phones as some top names sometimes take a few quarters, even a year to get their phones to the latest update. OnePlus realized the importance of updates and that community really cares about them, especially in the premium market segment.
Even some of the hottest phones that just started selling, like the Samsung Galaxy S9, still come with Android 8.0 and don’t offer the Tensor core lite support out of the box. This phone is yet to be updated to Android 8.1 Oreo despite the fact that it launched in markets such as European Union or US a month ago. Samsung just doesn’t get it.
AI, Tenesor Core lite
The OnePlus 5T update is 766 MB large and it includes the latest April 1 security patch. It doesn’t get better than that. The new full screen gesture support will mimic what people have seen with the iPhone X, as this action minimize the use of the home, back and task buttons and mimics them with swipe gestures.
Google is expected to announce Android 9 (Android P) next month at its I/O conference and of course it won’t ship this one until it comes with its next generation Pixel phone. One can expect the next generation Pixel phones in the first weeks of Q4, most likely in early October.
Android 8.1 is the first Android to officially support Neural network APIs designed to provide apps with on device machine learning. This is the first Android to support Tensor Flow Lite, an API that Google created for its Pixel visual core and the rest of the phones supporting dedicated hardware. Don’t despair if you think that your phone doesn’t have dedicated AI hardware, as Snapdragon 835 can put a neural network to very good use.
OnePlus is also expected to announce its new flagship OnePlus 6 phone with less bezel and the new Snapdragon 845 SoC very soon. OnePlus 5T is still among the top performing phones and definitely has one of the most refined price performance ratios on the current market.
This is the full list of changes:
Changelog:
SystemUpdated system to Android™ 8.1 Oreo™
Updated Android security patch to 2018-04
Added full-screen gesture support (Only 5T)
Gaming mode
Added new optimizations in gaming mode including power saving and pausing adaptive brightness
Launcher
Added category tags in the search section of the app drawer
Auto name folders based on category
