Oneplus Pushing Third Party App Updates Via OTA on Oneplus 8T

If you are one of those users who bought the Oneplus 8T in hopes of avoiding bloatware and Thrid-party apps then you are going be disappointed with recent developments. In a twist of events that has even left the famous Indian tech reviewer Geeky Ranjit confused and disappointed, it looks like Oneplus is pushing third party app updates via OTA. In a tweet from GeekyRanjit, he shows that his Oneplus 8T received an OTA update of 389 MB that had the update of Amazon Mobile app built in the update.

Got the new OTA update on OnePlus 8T I just noticed the first point, Oneplus is pushing third party app updates via OTA.... this is a scary trend... never saw apps added / updated via system OTA update.

But I guess no, one else will speak about this trend by Oneplus. pic.twitter.com/Ux41xl444W

— Ranjit (@geekyranjit) October 19, 2020

This is something that Oneplus has never done in their limited history. The whole point of Oneplus as a brand was to offer Flagships to customers that undercut bigger brands like Samsung while offering a pure Andriod experience. Even if Oneplus is changing its policies with its updates and OTA, they should have mentioned it to their users.

Oneplus has always touted itself as a brand that has prioritized its users above all. The practice of selling smartphones with bloatware is not something that people are surprised by. Many other smartphone brands like Redmi, Realme, and others who dominate the budget and mid-range segment fill their devices up with bloatware and apps to keep the costs low but at the price of INR 15,000 to 20,000 and even a little higher, it is a compromise that users are willing to make.

That being said, Oneplus 8T is not a mid-ranger or a budget device. This is the flagship that Oneplus sells around the world as their best device of the current year. This new update for Amazon could have been a mistake by someone on the dev team but even then it's problematic that Oneplus would so blatantly push an OTA update and offer no clarification or even a tweet.

This OTA update on Oneplus 8T seems to be India centric only. If you have received the OTA Update OnePlus 8T Oxygen OS 11.0.1.2.KB05DA then make sure that you update the device only after knowing what you are getting. Just to give readers an idea of what Oneplus positions itself as, in an article covered on the Verge called "OnePlus pulls Facebook bloatware from the OnePlus 8T" the company actually removed Facebook apps from the Oneplus 8T after getting criticized for pre-installing Facebook’s apps and services on the OnePlus Nord and 8-series.