OnePlus could be quietly updating the OnePlus 8T and OnePlus 9R
It’s been almost a year since the OnePlus 8T made its debut, while the OnePlus 9R is only a few months old as it was released alongside the OnePlus 9 series. However, it would appear as though OnePlus has been quietly updating the 8T and 9R (via XDA Developers.)
When the OnePlus 8T and 9R were originally released, OnePlus advertised the devices as featuring LPDDR4X memory. This is just fine in terms of performance but is still a bit slower than the new LPDDR5 memory found in the OnePlus 9 series. According to XDA, the company has been updating these two budget-friendly devices with faster LPDDR5 RAM without making any type of formal announcement. Even if you head over to the official OnePlus landing pages for either of these devices, the RAM type is still listed as LPDDR4X.
The change was discovered after some users attempted to unbrick their devices using the MSMDownloadTool. However, this tool for unbricking phones is not compatible with LPDDR5 RAM. This has led to quite a bit of confusion, with the LineageOS team issuing releases of different ROM images depending on which type of RAM your phone is using.
In most instances, this isn’t something that you will have to worry about with either the OnePlus 8T or 9R. These changes are primarily affecting those who are attempting to install a new ROM after rooting their device, only to discover that their phone cannot be un-bricked.
If you want to know exactly what type of RAM your OnePlus phone is using, the folks over at XDA have provided an ADB command that can be used:
adb shell getprop ro.boot.ddr_type
It wouldn’t come as much surprise if OnePlus doesn’t make any official announcement in regards to this hardware change. On the bright side, if you’ve recently picked up either the 8T or 9R for yourself, chances are that you have the faster RAM type which was previously reserved for the company’s flagships.
Let us know if you have run into similar problems, and whether your OnePlus 8T or 9R have been upgraded or not.