OnePlus clarifies and reveals more details on OxygenOS Beta program

OnePlus has offered more information on its OxygenOS Beta program that launched earlier this year. It’s been designed to give select owners of its smartphones a chance to test out updates to its Android-based operating system before they are released to everyone else.

The beta program consists of what OnePlus calls “Community builds” of its OxygenOS. In a forum post, the company explains that there are three different “streams” of these builds. The one that is updated the most is found in the Closed Beta stream. Only 60 or so OnePlus community members are picked to get Closed Beta updates, which happen four or more times a month.

See also: New OxygenOS community builds land for the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus X19

Closed Beta builds of OxygenOS, as you might expect, tend to have more bugs than the other “streams” but they also contain new features that won’t be released to everyone else for weeks or sometimes even months. Again, these builds are only available to a very select few users.

The same cannot be said of the builds sent to members of the Open Beta “stream”. Those OxygenOS versions are updated about twice a month, but they are also available for any OnePlus smartphone owners to download. While these OS versions are much more stable than the ones in the Closed Beta stream, they are still not quite ready for prime time.

That is reserved for the official over-the-air (OTA) release versions of OxygenOS, and those updates are offered to OnePlus smartphone owners every one to two months. Even though these builds are considered to be stable enough for an OTA release, the company still wants to know if there are any issues with them from owners:

We still continue to collect and analyze feature requests and bug reports, and we actually have some big things in the works to make the feedback process even better.

What is your opinion of OnePlus and its OxygenOS beta program? Is it effective as a bug and feature testing tool?