I’ve been a OnePlus fan for 12 years, but this latest update is my breaking pointThe old OnePlus is gone and the anti-rollback measures prove it.

I’ve been a OnePlus fan for 12 years, but this latest update is my breaking point

For the better part of a decade, a OnePlus phone has found its place in my pocket. When someone asked me for a recommendation — be it someone looking to upgrade to a no-nonsense, feature-packed smartphone, or a tinkerer looking for a platform to play around with — my answer was always a OnePlus smartphone. Between the great hardware, clean software out of the box, and a price tag that skirted well below other flagships, it was the safe recommendation. However, more than that, a OnePlus smartphone has traditionally been a smartphone that was, more or less, fully under your control.

If the phone was out of the software update guarantee period, you could install a custom ROM to breathe new life into it. If you didn’t like a software update, you could revert to the previous version. Or, if you just wanted to tinker around with hardware you owned, you could. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.

The old OnePlus is gone and the anti-rollback measures prove it.Dhruv Bhutani2026-01-23T11:30:23.000Z{}