While the messaging from OnePlus depicted a company with a singular goal of building efficiency through consolidation, in order to offer faster software updates for all OnePlus owners,
Android Central has learned that prior to the merger, many of the core members of the OxygenOS team left the company, including the Head of Mobile Product, Helen Li. Long hours and insufficient resources in the run-up to OnePlus 3's launch led to a number of OxygenOS team members striking a deal to terminate their contracts just after the phone's release, according to people who didn't want to be named because they signed non-disclosure agreements. As a result, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau had no choice but to merge the remaining members of OxygenOS, some of whom are only signed on until the end of 2016, and HydrogenOS.
According to these people, despite a 3:1 ratio of OxygenOS users to its Chinese market counterpart, OnePlus was disproportionately pouring resources into HydrogenOS, causing strain between the two teams and leading the subsequent talent purge.
Projects that uniquely identify OxygenOS, like the Shelf, are currently being tended to by the remaining OxygenOS members, who are assisting in the transition before they, too, leave. Similarly, the chief designer responsible for championing and maintaining OxygenOS' "Nexus-like" aesthetic, is no longer with the company, so it remains to be seen whether the now-unified product, dubbed OnePlus OS, or OOS, will shift more markedly towards a custom look and feel, similar to
Huawei's EMUI software layer, or Xiaomi's
MIUI, which looks and operates drastically different to what North American Android users expect.
