Kernel Sources and Device Trees Released for the OnePlus 5T

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The OnePlus 5T is now official. It packs a 6.01″ 18:9 display with a Snapdragon 835, 6/8GBs of RAM, 64/128GBs of storage, 3,300 mAh battery, and a 3.5mm headphone jack starting at $499. The history of OnePlus’ friendliness towards custom development and the relatively lower prices of their flagships tends to result in a flourishing of activity on our forums. We hope the same is true for the new OnePlus 5T, but only time will tell if custom development will pick up on the phone. To facilitate custom development, today OnePlus is releasing the device trees and kernel sources for the OnePlus 5T.

Now, of course every smartphone manufacturer that ships an Android device is obligated to release their kernel sources as the Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL. But as some of us know, many OEMs delay releasing their kernel sources for whatever reason. Starting with the OnePlus 3, OnePlus started releasing its kernel sources from day 1. The company is continuing this trend with the release of kernel sources for the OnePlus 5T.

The release of kernel sources is particularly important for our community. Without kernel sources, development of custom AOSP-based ROMs such as LineageOS would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Kernel sources are also necessary to make proper builds of TWRP available, though sometimes you can get away with repacking a TWRP image from another phone if the two devices are similar enough. The release of the OnePlus 5T kernel sources also helped us determine that the display panel is no longer inverted, which means that the jelly scrolling issue from the OnePlus 5 is likely absent.

We applaud OnePlus for their timely release of the kernel source for the OnePlus 5T. We hope that they commit to releasing kernel sources in a timely manner when the Android 8.0 Oreo update releases, as they have lagged in the past with regards to releasing kernel sources for major version updates.

View the kernel sources for the OnePlus 5T