The Chinese phone maker has finally rolled out Oxygen OS open beta 3 updates for its flagship phone Oneplus 5T and OxygenOS Open beta 5 updates for the older OnePlus 5 smartphone. Both open beta version will remove the Clipboard functionality, which was under limelight after French Security Researcher named Elliot Anderson tweeted that the file in the OxygenOS beta clipboard app called badwords.txt was helping the companies identify some data and sending it back to a Chinese server without user consent.
After this update, the phone app will now include an addition of a pick-up gesture switcher feature. A user will be able to choose which way they want to slide while picking up a phone call. OnePlus 5T boasts a full screen 18:9 display with no home button and the new beta adds more swiping gestures for navigation- much like the latest iPhone X.
Though at the time of questioning, Oneplus had denied all the claims regarding malfunctioning of Clipboard app and issued a statement saying, “There has been a false claim that the Clipboard app has been sending user data to a server. The code is entirely inactive in the open beta for OxygenOS, which is our global operating system. No user data is being sent to any of the suspicious servers without consent in OxygenOS. Local data in this folder is skipped over at times and not sent to any server.”
Now, the latest open beta updates on both phones remove the Clipboard function entirely – a bit ironic! According to one of the OnePlus forum post, OxygenOS beta 3 updates for OnePlus 5T, the list of changes include general bug fixes and improvements, removes clipboard function, and includes changes to the phone app.
The new update also includes a new CPU security patch. It also offers SMS categorization function for India only, where SMS messages will automatically be sorted into different categories-pretty much sorted! Those who have already opted for the open beta on their OnePlus 5 or OnePlus 5T should be able to see the new update on their phones.
OxygenOS Open Beta 5 update for the OnePlus 5 version also includes the same features as the OnePlus 5T update, though the navigation gestures are missing, provided this model does not have a full vision display and there is a physical home button also present on the device-just like the old times. The build includes the same CPU security patch, bug fixes and changes to the phone app for pick-up gesture as discussed for 5T.
It is to be noted that anyone installing these updates should keep in mind the potential risks and always back up all data as these builds are not stable at times. Though OnePlus has started open beta-testing for Android Oreo 8.0 on OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5 models, however, the company was forced to suspend the final Oreo build for OnePlus 5 due to bugs and other flaws!
Hope to see the Oreo updates rolling out in the future for OnePlus models soon!