Adoption by phone manufacturers of Google's newest OS, the Android 7.0 Nougat, has been fairly slow. To date, only Nexus phones have received the update, while several companies have it still unchecked in their to-do lists.
In terms of popularity, OnePlus devices have a fairly small, but extremely loyal supporters and followers. The crew behind OnePlus recently held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session over at Reddit, answering Redditors' litany of queries ranging from future phones they plan to release, updates to their proprietary custom UI called Oxygen and Hydrogen OS and a list of other things.
Most notably, one redditor asked whether the OnePlus developers are planning to release Android 7.0 for OnePlus 3 devices, its most recent flagship device.
"We cannot share a timeline right now, but we are already actively working on it," the head of ROM product said.
Like some developers and phone manufacturers before it, OnePlus' quasi-confirmation is somewhat vague. At this point, it could really mean anything from "soon" to even "not for a very long time." The lack of any concrete details regarding support for Android 7.0 doesn't help impatient customers who want the latest version of the OS.
Still, OnePlus 3 supporting Android 7.0 is the logical forward route for OnePlus' flagship device, if it wants to be on par with other smartphones that currently support the OS, and others that will support the OS in the future.
Despite the rather irresolute plans for OnePlus devices to support Android 7.0, the AMA session did bring some new information on other fronts. The OnePlus team has confirmed that OnePlus X will get the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update next week, good news for users still running Lollipop since the phone's launch. That being said, the update might be the last firmware version of Android it can support as its chipset and GPU isn't up to speed with Android 7.0 system requirements.
There were other bits of information redditors were able to dig out of the OnePlus team. According to the AMA session, OnePlus currently has no prospects or plans to develop, manufacture and release their own smartwatch. They're also not planning to release a smartphone running anything other than Android. So Windows, Ubuntu and any other compatible mobile operating systems are out of luck with OnePlus.
The OnePlus 3, released on June features a 5.5 inch Optic AMOLED touchscreen display with a 1,920 x 1,080 pixels Full HD resolution at 401 ppi.
It has a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera that can record 4K video at 30 fps, and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. The OnePlus 3 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and the Adreno 530 GPU. It is available at the OnePlus store.
