OnePlus announced that it plans to support its flagship Android phone for three years and provide security patches for four years. This brings the company's update policy nearly in line with Samsung's, which is a big plus for OnePlus users.

OnePlus has had a poor update track record in recent years, leading some to distrust the company. Now, OnePlus hopes to have addressed most of that. However, this is only for the flagship series; the Nord and Nord N lines are not covered.

The timing is fortuitous given that I just finished critiquing OnePlus and its software support plans in my three-month revisit of the OnePlus 9 Pro. This new information has forced me to reconsider some of my final conclusions.

In a forum post, OnePlus stated that its behind-the-scenes merger with Oppo has allowed it to support these devices longer. In fact, the OnePlus 8 series and beyond (including all T and R variants) will enjoy this longer support. This means that the 2019 OnePlus 7 series is nearing the end of the platform's support schedule, though.

It should be noted, however, that the Nord, Nord CE, and later Nord phones will still be subject to two years of Android updates and three years of security patches for the Nord N (including the just-released Nord N200 5G), upgraded to 3 years of security patches, but the platform update remains laughably bad at 1 year.

While its promises are all well and good, OnePlus has been generally slower than Samsung and Google to release updates to its devices, especially on older, budget options. Another criticism is the need to run open beta software to apply the latest security patches. Also, one should not forget the stability issues with recent updates.

The carrier model is another issue altogether, and depending on how well the carriers do, support may be scaled back; we can't blame OnePlus, but US carriers are notoriously difficult to work with at times.

We applaud OnePlus for this new update policy, but to fully enjoy it, you'll need to buy one of their more expensive flagship models. Still, it is a big step in the right direction and makes OnePlus devices even easier to recommend.