The OnePlus 6T is an impressive beast that recently started being shipped worldwide. Many people got their hands on this device, but aside from the impressive specs, T-Mobile’s version of OnePlus 6T has one exclusive gem—native support for Google Feed in its launcher!
The first time this was brought to attention was two days ago by XDA forum member cheerup38, who pointed out that there is an option in the stock OnePlus launcher to pick between the Shelf (OnePlus widget screen) and Google Feed (now known as Google Discover since the recent rebranding).
And, later today, an extracted APK of the T-Mobile’s launcher version emerged on Reddit. The only problem is—users are reporting that they are unable to simply install it on their global OnePlus 6T devices. The T-Mobile version's launcher has the 3.0.2 version number, while the “regular” OnePlus 6T comes with version 3.1.0. This may be the cause for the failure to install, but the issue is still being looked into.
Notably, OnePlus launcher version 3.10 implements a new navigation gesture on the OnePlus 6T and OnePlus 6, so it's strange that the T-Mobile version shipped with the older launcher version. T-Mobile users reported no problems when updating the launcher from version 3.0.2 up to 3.10, while keeping the Google Discover feature. This suggests that the feature can be enabled by a feature flag, though we are still investigating how to enable it without modding the APK.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Google Feed on OnePlus devices, but it’s the first time that OnePlus has officially supported the feature in their launcher. It may be possible that OnePlus is just testing Google Feed integration on the T-Mobile version and that they will bring it with an app update to everyone else soon enough. Stay tuned!