OnePlus 8T Open Beta 1 Oxygen OS 12 (Non-T-Mobile Firmware)

Wizards Enterprise wrote:

T-Mobile is notorious for being the last to release updates for their phones. I've been with T-Mobile for 12 years and I have the OnePlus 8T+ that i bought from them... Besides being the worst phone I've ever owned, I've also realized that Android 13 will be out before I even get Android 12. This has taught me two things: 1) Don't ever buy any phone unless it's a Samsung or Apple, and 2) Don't ever buy any phone that is customized by T-Mobile (or any carrier) but rather buy the unlocked version of the phone. I just purchased the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra directly from Samsung and they specifically recommended that I purchase the unlocked version instead of the T-Mobile specific version (with no price difference) because of how lazy T-Mobile is with regards to releasing new software. I'm only with T-Mobile because I'm grandfathered into the old $100 (all taxes and fees included) unlimited all in plan for 3 lines and you can't get a price like that anywhere. The moment they do something to break that grandfathered plan I have I'll never do business with T-Mobile again.

People still blame carriers for updates when the rest of the world since Android 4.0 and Google have moved away from this.  Carriers have no control when OEM's finish updates like people believe they do.  Even OEM's have admitted this and fell on deaf ears.  Google walked away from it when they did an AOSP project with Sony and found this out.  HTC even released a chart on how they do their update process.  Sony did and other than names you can see it's essentially the same process and carriers don't get involved until testing against their network security. 

OnePlus CHOSE to fork their update process.  They could have done what every other OEM does. 

You could have bought an S22 locked to any carrier from around the world and you could side load the update. The software isn't tied to a carrier like people still believe it has.  Since project Treble ANY OEM can update their devices without carriers involvement.  Whether locked or unlocked get updates all at the same time UNLESS there is an update specific to security flaws or enhancement to carrier networks.  For example Pixel 6 there are some OTA with carriers tied to them but have the same version number.  Why is that?  The OS itself is all the carrier, but the way Android does carrier partitions are modular.  You can load the one without the carrier, and wouldn't break your device.  Why can't OEM's do the same?  Think about it?  It's all about the money

Oh funny they say unlocked get updates before carrier versions… It's not like carriers can stop updates that are never submitted to them to push out.  Did you know there are actual laws against this unless the government deems it detrimental to government security and public well being?

What actually happens is called a staggered release and not all devices will get it at the same time as everyone else does.