Starting with the OnePlus 9 series
The Paranoid Android team made a huge comeback last year with their Android 12-based Sapphire Alpha builds. Initially, the ROM was available for a handful of phones before its availability expanded to more devices from OnePlus and Xiaomi. Now, more than four months after the initial build of Sapphire Alpha dropped, the Paranoid Android team has released the first beta build of their ROM for the OnePlus 9 series.
In its announcement on XDA, Paranoid Android developer arter97 noted that in the three months since the release of the last alpha build, the ROM has received over 700 commits and several other device-related improvements. This list includes the latest CAF changes being merged, integration of kdrag0n’s Repainter service, and burn-in protection feature. The device-specific modifications pertaining to the OnePlus 9 series include the use of prebuilt blobs to avoid issues related to audio, video, and NFC; fingerprint sensor improvements; and a customized kernel for better performance and stability. Variable refresh rates now work correctly on the OnePlus 9 Pro, which should positively impact battery life.
Despite the bump up to beta, the ROM still has some stability issues that could be a deal-breaker for some. Your OnePlus 9 could take a bit of time to connect to a mobile network after a reboot. Additionally, Wi-Fi may not always work, requiring multiple reboots to fix the issue. Pocket detection is also imperfect and could result in accidental wake-ups or gestures. Lastly, the boot animation may seem to hang for a second, though the actual boot process will remain unaffected by this.
If you are already running an alpha release of Paranoid Android on your OnePlus 9 series, a clean flash is recommended instead of dirty flashing the beta build. You can find the download links of the Sapphire beta build for the OnePlus 9 here. While not mentioned, we will likely see the first beta version of Paranoid Android Sapphire land for other devices pretty soon.
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