If, like me, you ordered your OnePlus X from China then it will come with Hydrogen OS, but with a few minutes work you too can have the international Oxygen OS on your OnePlus X.
Hardware and design is the same between the Chinese and International versions of the OnePlus X, the only difference being that the Chinese version of the phone ships with Hydrogen OS rather than Oxygen OS.
Hydrogen OS does have the option to run in English, but out of the box it does not have support for Google services, and for an international user this is a must. Hydrogen OS is also a little basic too, and installing Oxygen OS on your OnePlus X will really bring the phone to life.
Chinese reseller SPEmall sent me my OnePlus X, a white and gold version, which arrived today so they hadn’t had a chance to update the system to Oxygen OS for me. Thankfully the ROM was released on the Chinese OnePlus forums today and the switch is super easy.
How to update your OnePlus X to Oxygen OS
Before you begin please remember that you are performing this update at your own risk. If you do manage to brick your phone then it’s entirely on you.
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Also before you start make sure you have at least 30% of power in your phone and also 2GB of available memory. You might want to install Oxygen OS as soon as you get your phone so you don’t have to back up photos, apps etc.
Instructions to install Oxygen OS on your OnePlus X
- Download the OnePlusOxygen_14 update from the Baidu link here.
- Connect your OnePlus X to your PC.
- Do not unzip the ROM, and move it over to the OnePlus X’s internal storage.
- Turn off the OnePlus X
- Press Volume Down and the Power button together to get the OnePlus X in to recovery mode.
- Choose “English” > “Wipe data and cache” > “Install from local” > navigate to the Oxygen OS ROM.
- Choose “OK” and wait for the update process to end.
- Once installed your OnePlus X should reboot and now be running a fresh installation of Oxygen OS.
- Enjoy!
I am not going to go and play with the OnePlus X to get to grips with this latest phone from OnePlus. Stay tuned tomorrow for our hands on, review next week. Those of you who want to order the OnePlus X from SPEmall can do so on this link and save $8 with the following code: SPEXX.
I prefer AOSP or CyanogenMod. It is nice that we can choose the one that we like. Unfortunately not on all phones because of not obeying Android’s GPL license by most Chinese companies.
As a Linux user I do love having a choice but as a Xiaomi (and others) user I can also appreciate what they do and why they used a close system. The beauty of Android is there will always be a choice for you.