Ryan Haines / Android Authority
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.
OnePlus didn’t just end the enthusiast era. It’s actively locking enthusiasts out.
Between the news of hardware-backed anti-rollback protection in the upcoming Android 16 builds and the increasingly hostile stance on bootloader unlocking, OnePlus has effectively closed the door on the very crowd that built its reputation. It’s not just that the enthusiast era is over; it’s that the company is now actively locking enthusiasts out.
How important is bootloader unlocking to you? 28 votes It's critical to my smartphone buying decision. 50 % I don't care about it. 50 %
The anti-rollback measure turns updates into a one-way street
To understand why this feels like such a betrayal for enthusiasts, we have to first look at what’s changed. For the average user, a system update is a pretty straightforward affair. You tap a button, the phone reboots, and you get a series of security and feature upgrades. But for enthusiasts, the update has traditionally been a two-way street. There was always an option to roll back.
Enthusiasts like options, including the option to revert to a prior version of software if that’s what they prefer. It has other benefits too. If a new update introduces a show-stopping, battery-draining bug, a new graphics driver that doesn’t play well with specific software, or even removes a feature you liked, the ability to downgrade was your safety net. With the introduction of hardware-backed anti-rollback protection in the Android 16 codebase — specifically within the ColorOS foundation that now powers OxygenOS — OnePlus is removing that undo button.
Here’s how it works. Inside the phone’s processor is a set of microscopic, one-time-programmable fuses known as e-fuses. When you update the phone’s firmware to a new security version, the system sends a voltage spike to a specific fuse, physically blowing it. This is a permanent, irreversible hardware change.
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