OnePlus 9 Series will ship with ColorOS in China: Pete Lau

The Chinese smartphone maker, OnePlus’ phones ships with two different Android Skins. In China, their phones ship with HydrogenOS while the rest of the world gets OxygenOS. Even the latter has exclusive features in regions such as India. Starting with the OnePlus 9 series, OnePlus phones sold in China will now ship with ColorOS.

According to some media reports, the announcement was officially made by the company’s CEO, Pete Lau, on Weibo. The founder and CEO revealed that the OnePlus 9 series will have ColorOS pre-installed from the factory. He also added that previous devices running HydrogenOS will continue to get support. The official ColorOS Weibo account also posted a welcome message on its page.

ColorOS is OPPO’s own Android Skin that it ships with its devices. The UI also shipped with realme-branded phones for a while before they announced their own skin called realme UI. It is surprising that while realme, which is a younger brand than OnePlus has ditched ColorOS, OnePlus is dropping its own UI in favor of ColorOS.

As per the report, it is safe to presume that OnePlus has no plans of updating its older devices that run HydrogenOS to ColorOS. It has also promised that these devices will continue to receive support.

One upside we can think of from this new development is that OnePlus phones, at least those sold in China, should get better software support henceforth since the ColorOS team, which we believe is much larger than the HydrogenOS team, will most likely also be handling the OnePlus phones running ColorOS.

OnePlus has not said anything about the future of OxygenOS, so we expect it will continue shipping with OnePlus phones sold outside China.

The OnePlus 9 series launches tomorrow globally while a special event for China is scheduled for March 24.