Newsletter
As promised by OnePlus in December, the company’s two latest flagships can now receive HD streaming capabilities for popular online video services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, but the catch in that OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T owners wanting to receive the update are required to send their devices back to the manufacturer. This solution was revealed recently by a community manager on the official OnePlus forums and appears to be the only way to fix the problem.
The OnePlus 5 and 5T flagships were shipped last year with the Widevine L3 Certificate pre-installed, which allows for SD quality streaming from DRM-protected websites. However, both devices lack the Widevine L1 Certificate required for streaming videos from these platforms in HD or higher quality, and shortly after this issue was brought to light by community members, OnePlus responded and informed its customers that a solution will soon be devised. A couple of months later and OnePlus is now ready to fix the issue, but the big caveat is that the Widevine L1 Certificate can only be applied to smartphones when they are physically connected to an authenticated PC. In other words, OnePlus 5 and 5T owners who want to receive the L1 Certificate will have to send their smartphones to OnePlus. The OEM claims it has a process in place that will allow it to ship back these devices in no more than five working days from the moment it receives them, and in addition, OnePlus claims that it will cover the courier costs, at least in its official markets including North America, Europe, India, and China.
Evidently, some customers, especially those who reside outside of the officially supported regions are not too happy with the way OnePlus is handling the matter, but the OEM claims that this is the only option available due to the security processes that would be involved in distributing such an update over the air. At the end of the day, OnePlus 5 and 5T owners are now left with the choice of whether they wish to go through with the shipping process which would force them to part ways with their smartphones for about a week or more, or continue to use their handsets with their existing online streaming limitations in place.