So never buy OnePlus products. Got it. Thanks OnePlus for making the advice so clear!
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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That's what I heard. I know Samsung has been doing something like this as well.
Samsung has been blowing fuses in your phone when you root since at least 2015. I know because it happened to me. Never bought one again after that.
Yep, Samsung Knox is the feature name; does it actually prevent things or is it just "tamper evidence" for corporate devices?
According to the linked article it prevents the use of Samsung Pay and access to the Secure Folder (an extra layer of security you can enable that requires a second PIN to be input before you can access certain apps and files). This seems pretty reasonable, the goal is clearly to prevent access to especially sensitive data if someone has stolen the phone.
It's not reasonable in my opinion.
I can maybe understand not wanting other operating systems in their attestation chain that is protecting a payment system from the standpoint of liability.
All of the other things are entirely hardware features that any OS should be able to use. They're using the ARM Trusted Execution Environment (ARM TrustZone) and a embedded Secure Element to enable the ability to store cryptographiclly secured files without the system ever having access to the keys.
Both TEEs and eSEs are not a Samsung invention or IP and are enabled by hardware on the device, the TEE is part of the ARM standard and is used in a huge number of other OSs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family). Secure Elements are also widely used pieces of hardware supported by innumerable OSs and also a feature of the hardware that you paid for.
GrapheneOS also claims it's not defending against anything real. Which makes sense as Pixels can clearly maintain security while allowing alternate OSes. So this is just hostile vendor lock-in. Disappointing as there was some speculation that OP would be the GOS OEM, but there's no way they would do this is that was true.
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That makes sense. I figured they were worried that an alternate OS would be more likely to exploit their encryption somehow, but if it's all using industry standard hardware then it really ought to be open.
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Samsung just does it to trigger Knox and not let you use some security minded things on the phone.
They also, however, have their phones pretty much impossible to root anymore. I don't think most ever get a custom rom, because pretty much no one can get a Samsung phone to except one. I believe my old Note 20 Ultra is still not rootable.
I'd love to put a custom OS on mine, even if it tripped the Knox fuse (which disables the Samsung Pay NFC option). The issue I have is that no CFW allows / guarantees compatible VoLTE...and without that, phones don't really work on Australian networks. Have to have 4G + white listed VoLTE.
Its a mess down here.
Ironically, my Duoquin F21 pro works perfectly. How they got white listed I have no idea
For me I found out when I wanted them to fix something and they refused to honour the warranty because of the blown fuse.
As far as I know, this is illegal, btw. They have to prove that the error you are reporting is caused by user action. If your battery craps out, they can't blame it on you rooting your phone.
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Wow, what happened to OnePlus? They used to be so cool. Hell, the first one ran Cyanogen.
They're basically being folded into Oppo right now. OnePlus as a company is pretty much dead.
“Open” once again being abused as angle to build something for an exit. It sounds like.
what has happened, indeed. I still use an 8T and I love it heavily, but good lord. apparently you miss a few models and the whole company changes.
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Wasn't OnePlus like worshipped because of how much support for custom ROMs wth
The original "One" phone was even supposed to run cyanogemod out of the box at one point.
It was shipped with Cyanogenmod for a while.
Yes they were and did for about 6 years, 2014-2020ish isn't a bad run
If true, this is sabotage of the customers product, and must 100% be illegal in almost any country!!
But my guess is they are limiting this to countries that have absolute shit consumer protection.
I haven't read the entire XDA thread but there are a few posts saying it's limited to ColorOS (Chinese version of android that everyone else gets as OxygenOS). Unable to verify.
If they don't reverse course, I'm sure it'll roll out globally eventually. This has to run afoul of EU's strong warranty laws right?
Things are illegal only when enforced. Otherwise they're a suggestion at best.
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....oh? I thought every console used this kind of tech as well.
So are console sold with the possibility of changing the OS, only to have that option removed later? There was some issue with PS3, but apart from that I never heard about it.
Ooooh, okay, now I understand. I was referring to the way modern consoles blow a fuse with each new patch so you can't load older patches.
But yeah, the PS3 removed the ability to boot Linux which it was explicitly advertised to have and it was a huge thing at the time.
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"...long enough to become the villain."
Holy shit. I wanted to say something constructive, but just…. holy shit. Intentional hard brick of a customer owned device….
That means they were making money by people running their os.
If they spend the money on re-engineering their devices not to allow it, there was a cost advantage to selling your data.
Many users were buying OpenPlus Pro smartphones solely because of the ability to unlock the bootloader and flash custom ROMs. People value freedom and customization. OpenPlus is shooting itself in the foot.
Oppo killed and ate OP a long time ago. They've just been wearing their skin like a suit up to this point, but their true nature is obvious at this point.
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I bought a OP 9Pro just before Oppo decimated the company. They moved from Oxygen OS to a poorly camouflaged version of Oppo Color OS and stripped out some of the features that made Oneplus what it was. Oppo also almost completely stopped fixing bugs, even some really serious ones that had been long documented. I recently bought a new phone and didn't even consider ~~Oneplus~~ Oppo.
It seems to me that the only reason Oppo would do this is to preserve the revenue they get from selling customer data that should remain private. Otherwise why would Oppo care what OS people run on their hardware?
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I get why they do this, because downgrade attacks are a thing that are used to exploit devices remotely, but there are other ways to implement this, like what GrapheneOS does. Downgrading can also just be restricted to unlocked bootloaders as well via a software revocation list that gets deleted/bypassed upon unlocking.
There is no good reason for devices to use efuses to block downgrades unless they are trying to restrict user freedom a la consoles.
- Reasonable: prevent downgrades when the bootloader is locked
- Sketchy: prevent downgrades when the bootloader is unlocked
- Unhinged: hard-brick the device when a downgrade is attempted
No good reason
In better times, this would at least get a class action.
"OnePlus shoots own foot. Likely to blame consumers for it"
so it basically permanently "damages" the phone when you try to root it, seems like they are asking for a lawsuit at some point.
One plus joined my short list of "I can't be bothered" companies like Samsung and Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo and some other sub par companies.
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Another company to add to the list.
They have already collapsed and won't be making phones anymore
Wow I didn’t think my list would take effect so quickly!
And yet my LinkedIn is still full of people complaining about how much the EU over-regulates
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Well...So did Samsung with Samsung Knox
Oh well then... if the bastion of open and customer focused development did it
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I don't know why this thread is complaining specifically about Chinese OEMs when Samsung has been doing this for years.
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