That means they were making money by people running their os.
If they spend the money on re-engineering their devices not to allow it, there was a cost advantage to selling your data.
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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"OnePlus shoots own foot. Likely to blame consumers for it"
It's not flashing a custom ROM. It is installing an OS of users choice. Enemy's language shouldn't be used if we want things to change
Still custom as it's not the default
What makes it "custom"? If you install Linux on a laptop that comes with Windows pre-installed, is Linux then a custom OS it's not being a default? Why phones are any different? Calling it custom you play to the manufacturers pockets making it sound shady and unofficial giving them right to take the control from the customers devices. Soon we won't own anything we buy.
Because for phones they kinda are custom. The smartphone hardware landscape is an absolute clusterfuck of proprietary blobs and closed source drivers and all sorts of shit that makes it so you need a lot of work to customize the base os to work on any particular device. ROMs have rather short lists of compatible phones, and each one of those had to have a build specifically developed for them. You can't take, say, grapheneos and slap it on any phone you like.
I've never thought a custom ROM sounded shady.
To me it was always, "we only have vanilla or chocolate on the menu, but if you're willing to risk bricking your phone, you can get cookies and cream."
I picked cookies and cream.
On PC it is usually called "other"
Well...So did Samsing with Samsung Knox
Oh well then... if the bastion of open and customer focused development did it
Many users were buying OpenPlus Pro smartphones solely because of the ability to unlock the bootloader and flash custom ROMs. People value freedom and customization. OpenPlus is shooting itself in the foot.
This is why I bought a pixel 6
This will never stop being funny
Sadly, at least in the North American market, Google's Pixel phones are basically the last good phones you can reliably install your own ROM on.
Oppo killed and ate OP a long time ago. They've just been wearing their skin like a suit up to this point, but their true nature is obvious at this point.
so it basically permanently "damages" the phone when you try to root it, seems like they are asking for a lawsuit at some point.
Wanna try suing Samsung before that?
Why would they start with the harder one? Samsung is much better funded, and therefore will be a much more difficult case.
And no, it does not matter that Samsung did it first.
One plus joined my short list of "I can't be bothered" companies like Samsung and Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo and some other sub par companies.
And all that while OnePlus was awesome up until the OnePlus 7 pro.
I had the 5t until last year and it was still awesome.
Holy shit. I wanted to say something constructive, but just…. holy shit. Intentional hard brick of a customer owned device….
"...long enough to become the villain."
So never buy OnePlus products. Got it. Thanks OnePlus for making the advice so clear!
That's what I heard. I know Samsung has been doing something like this as well.
Samsung has been blowing fuses in your phone when you root since at least 2015. I know because it happened to me. Never bought one again after that.
Samsung just does it to trigger Knox and not let you use some security minded things on the phone.
They also, however, have their phones pretty much impossible to root anymore. I don't think most ever get a custom rom, because pretty much no one can get a Samsung phone to except one. I believe my old Note 20 Ultra is still not rootable.
I'd love to put a custom OS on mine, even if it tripped the Knox fuse (which disables the Samsung Pay NFC option). The issue I have is that no CFW allows / guarantees compatible VoLTE...and without that, phones don't really work on Australian networks. Have to have 4G + white listed VoLTE.
Its a mess down here.
Ironically, my Duoquin F21 pro works perfectly. How they got white listed I have no idea
For me I found out when I wanted them to fix something and they refused to honour the warranty because of the blown fuse.
As far as I know, this is illegal, btw. They have to prove that the error you are reporting is caused by user action. If your battery craps out, they can't blame it on you rooting your phone.
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Wasn't OnePlus like worshipped because of how much support for custom ROMs wth
Yes they were and did for about 6 years, 2014-2020ish isn't a bad run
The original "One" phone was even supposed to run cyanogemod out of the box at one point.
It was shipped with Cyanogenmod for a while.
I bought a OP 9Pro just before Oppo decimated the company. They moved from Oxygen OS to a poorly camouflaged version of Oppo Color OS and stripped out some of the features that made Oneplus what it was. Oppo also almost completely stopped fixing bugs, even some really serious ones that had been long documented. I recently bought a new phone and didn't even consider ~~Oneplus~~ Oppo.
It seems to me that the only reason Oppo would do this is to preserve the revenue they get from selling customer data that should remain private. Otherwise why would Oppo care what OS people run on their hardware?
Wow, what happened to OnePlus? They used to be so cool. Hell, the first one ran Cyanogen.
they saw GOOGLE was trying to lockdown thier bootloader, or restrict it.
So they said, “Nuh uh, we’re gonna lock it down so you can’t!” Or am I misunderstanding?
It's more an "if everyone is doing it why not us" type of thing.
They're basically being folded into Oppo right now. OnePlus as a company is pretty much dead.
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I get why they do this, because downgrade attacks are a thing that are used to exploit devices remotely, but there are other ways to implement this, like what GrapheneOS does. Downgrading can also just be restricted to unlocked bootloaders as well via a software revocation list that gets deleted/bypassed upon unlocking.
There is no good reason for devices to use efuses to block downgrades unless they are trying to restrict user freedom a la consoles.
- Reasonable: prevent downgrades when the bootloader is locked
- Sketchy: prevent downgrades when the bootloader is unlocked
- Unhinged: hard-brick the device when a downgrade is attempted
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If true, this is sabotage of the customers product, and must 100% be illegal in almost any country!!
But my guess is they are limiting this to countries that have absolute shit consumer protection.
Things are illegal only when enforced. Otherwise they're a suggestion at best.
That's part of how shitty the consumer protection really is.
But common for all, there needs to be complaints before the law is involved.
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