Another OnePlus controversy this time in India

MentalDraco · February 8, 2018

Now OnePlus has had it's share of "blunders" but it seems that they still can't settle and give a straight answer to the problem.

A new problem appeared with the recent Oreo update that officially hit the OP 5T, about a week ago.

Indian users that updated to it (using VPN at the time as the update was only available in Canada, Germany and perhaps a few other places) found a new app on their phones, previously not present and not mentioned anywhere in the update notes... Mkey. As soon as people noticed this red flags wore raised on the forum about the issue demanding answer to what the app is and why is it there, the app is not present in the play store even if some apps in the play store carry the same name.

After about 1-2 days of silence, and the issue being taken up by moderators we got a piece of an answer. The original update notes got an edited piece of attached text.

Here is the link to the update notes : https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oxygenos-5-0-3-ota-for-the-oneplus-5t.766693/

There they said and I quote:

"We've added an APK called Mkey, this is a font resource that was provided officially for India for local font compatibility needs. This can be uninstalled by users if not needed or wanted, but we are required to provide it. 5.0.3 does not include Mkey."

Now you may see that in they quote they say they ARE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE IT, make a note of that since that is important for later.

Now even so people on the forum needles to say still had questions, and a list was made of about 13 questions about the app in the thread discussing it

Here is a link to the thread it's about 46, pages and almost 1000 posts at the moment of me writing this : https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/mkey-what-is-this-app-about.767147/

Community Questions:
1) what does this app do? Is it just another sms app? Or a keyboard app? What is its function?

2) why does it need every single permission?

3) Why did oneplus roll this out to so many users with no proper description, no communication about it and with no consent?
Why it wasn't mentioned in the changelog in the first place ?

4) Who required OnePlus to provide it then?

5) Why just some (and not all) of the Indian users are provided with it?

6) Whats the necessity?

7) How secure is this app?

8) What is the privacy policy of this app? And where can we find it?

9) What information doesn it share with external parties? Is it just anonymous information that is shared?
Or personally identifiable information?

10) What information does the app save on its own servers? What security compliances and certifications does the app have?

11) Oneplus already have native support for all indian local languages fonts.
There are already Indian local language native support in Oneplus device, than what was the need for this so called font resources app?
Why this strange never before heard app chosen for this already available functionality?

12) Are all OP devices being given this app in their updates? So far reports are just for OP5T, so why not OP5, OP3/3T and legacy devices if you are "required" to provide it?

13) Why this had to be a non-playstore app if at all OP wished to bundle with the OS?

As you can see all valid questions, and these wore sent of by a moderator of the forum - SoniaB - have to say she did a great job trying to help all, doing the questions and keeping us informed, props to her -

Now It has been over a week and all we got is silence from OnePlus, not even an acknowledgement of the questions, and mind you, these wore sent off by a moderator of the forum not a simple user. \

Now do you remember the WE ARE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE IT PART i mentioned earlier, yea here it comes in to play now. About a day after they edited the update notes with that information we got a NEW UPDATE for the phone bringing it from Oreo 5.0.2 to 5.0.3, the small update seemed to do one thing, which they called system improvements, what improvements ? Well the update REMOVED the Mkey app, you know THE THING THAT THEY WORE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE.

When asked by users why it's now no longer required no answers came back from the staff member in charge of the thread about the update notes, and he did not answer the moderator helping the user SoniaB to this date.

The sound of silence from OnePlus.

Now as a EU user I never had that app on my phone, it seems it was specific to India, but I am still amazed how bad OnePlus is answering to any issues that arise, it amazes me that after the recent problems with credit card theft, the clipboard issues, the HUGE problems with the camera on the OP 5T (i am talking about the fact that it turns your pictures into oil paintings if you have not read about this) OnePlus continues to just go blindly ahead.

I know this is a bit of a long post put thanks for reading it :D.

Edit: as an additional interesting extra info piece, a few accounts popped up on the thread discussing Mkey, those accounts wore literary 1 day or less old, so they wore just made and claimed that OnePlus did a good thing and that people should not be concerns about the app. Now this people seemed to also post the same copy pasted answer in other places where this issue was being discussed including reddit. Since these accounts wore just made and the only post they had to their names was the one praising OnePlus for the unknown Mkey app, users determined that these are probably OnePlus staff members in disguise but of course that is just speculations and can't really be proven, still considering I would not be surprised if it was true - you can read about them in the link to the Mkey thread on the forum since they posted there and people discussed what they said and where they came from -.

Edited February 8, 2018 by MentalDraco
Grammar mistake, Additional info

MentalDraco · February 8, 2018

Also as an addition here is the link to the app.

A user informed me that this apps page was not even live when the update was released it was just showing a log in screen, the page was accessible to the public around the 4th of February

https://mkey.co.in/

the app is still coming soon to the play store on their official page.

Info provided to be by OnePlus forum user Bobbie63