OnePlus confirms it won’t support Project Treble on any of its current phones – including OnePlus 5T

After its launch on November 16, the OnePlus 5T became available to order yesterday with a discounted Early Bird Bundle. It's surprising that the OnePlus 5T isn't running Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, especially considering that the handset maker just began rolling out the official Oreo OTA to the OnePlus 3 and 3T models. Even more surprising is the fact that OnePlus has no plans to add Project Treble support to the OnePlus 5T, a fact the company confirmed in its forums. 

You might be asking just what is Project Treble, and what the big fuss is. Well, Project Treble is Google's way of making Android updates easier and quicker for all parties. As Jared explains here:

“The game plan for Treble is to remove the vendor implementation of software from the Android OS framework. There will be a separate layer in between the two, which theoretically should make for a quicker update schedule for a manufacturer like HTC to get their software going without having to worry so much about the underlying hardware.”

For the most part, phones need to launch running Oreo out of the box to support Project Treble, with the notable exception of the original Pixels. It's important to note that the Essential Phone may get Treble support and that Huawei has previously said that Project Treble is coming to its 2016 flagship, the Mate 9. Which means it is definitely possible to add support at a later date. Alas, OnePlus has confirmed that it has no plans to support Project Treble on any of its current handsets.

OnePlus hasn't given any reasons why it won't support Project Treble unfortunately. For what it's worth, OnePlus has committed to bringing Android 8.1 to the OnePlus 3 and 3T but it doesn't look like we'll be seeing headlines saying that OnePlus has “doubled down on Project Treble” in the foreseeable future, at least until the OnePlus 6 comes around anyway.

Source: OnePlus