[OnePlus Nord N10 5G Guides, News, & Discussion] FNetV1:
Warning! Your root status could be in danger!

Here's why:

On Saturday (September 18, 2021), I went to BestBuy to buy the OnePlus Nord N10 BE2026 (Unlocked US) variant. It came with Android 10.5.8 pre-installed. The very first thing I did was turn off operating system auto updates on developers options ( did this while not being connected to WiFi and not yet having inserted my SIM card, no data connection = no chance for my phone to download any updates before I got to set my settings accordingly) then unlock its boot loader and root it. I had Magisk Version 21 with the app version 23 installed, which was the only combination I was able to get it to pass SatetyNet with this particular version of android. Everything else worked fine, no problem, a perfect phone.

I then installed my call recorder app/module that my business depends on to document and enforce verbal customer's agreements - (Axer's Call Recorder Module through Magisk), after changing input to "Voice" method, then it worked perfectly fine.

Next, I installed my favorite root based battery management app in order to maximize the useful life of my battery: Name of App: Battery Charge Limit

Objective: Don't go higher than 80%, effectively leaving me the freedom to leave the phone plugged in on the charger overnight and knowing the phone isn't just going to be sitting on 100% for 8+hours, which would be VERY detrimental for the Lithium Polymer technologies smartphone typical uses. This strategy, in theory, should get me thousands of good charge cycle on this battery and I should be able to use this phone for many many years to come without having to worry about the battery's chemistry degrading.

My system updates strategy: Manual, update everything manually, after making sure the update isn't going to cause me any problems, especially that it isn't just going to remove my root, but that it isn't going to leave me with an unrootable phone.

What method did I employ to enforce my wants in terms of changing system updates to manual:

On "Developer Options", where it says "Automatic System Updates", I turned it off. I did this before I joined my WiFi network and before I inserted the SIM card.

Okay, here's where the problem occurred:

Today I woke up to find a few anomalies:

When I woke up, the phone wasn't responding to my fingerprint unlock command, I would place my finger on the fingerprint sensor, and nothing would happen. I pressed the power button and I had to enter the unlock PIN then my phone proceeded to tell me it had installed a system update. On the notification bar, I could see "Android System", "Finishing system update..." with a progress bar that quickly finished and that was it.

I opened Magisk to check if I was still rooted, and no, I wasn't rooted.

I checked what version of Android was I running, and sure, it had updated to version 11

I remember that I was steaming mad, I was upset that the phone had updated the android version regardless of what I wanted, regardless of what my settings were.

I had turned off "Automatic system updates..." on Developers Options, I had turned off updates on the Google Playstore, I have set updates there to "manual" and to notify me when there was an update.

I remember never having received a notification/reminder that there was an update to be installed, nothing before I went to bed only to see this surprise when I woke up today.

I had everything pertaining to updates either turned off or set to manual, I don't understand why Android 11 forced its way against my will today. After all the bad things I read from other users regarding the many problems they have experienced with Android 11, upgrading my android version to Android 11 was the LAST thing on my to-do list at the moment, but it happened, AGAINST MY WILL!! However, I haven't experienced any problems with Android 11 at the moment, and yes, I was able to root it again just fine. I had to re-setup my call recorder, perform many tests to make sure it's working just alright. The whole process stole about 2 hours of my time, instead of me calling my customers in the morning, I had to tackle this - pronto! while I did had a functional phone that I could immediately start calling people, my call recorder would have not been working because the phone lost root with the Android 11 forced upgrade, so I had to resolve that first before I could resume my business.

Yes, I was still able to pass SafetyNet, but with Magisk version 23 installed instead of 21 since that's the version that works with Android 11 (Android 11.0.1 to be exact of the version that my phone is running atm).

This is where my title "Your root could be in danger" comes to play. Your root is working fine at the moment. Yes, it's perfect, rock-solid -- at the moment.... UNTIL one of these updates that you thought was not going to be auto-install FORCE its way to your device against your will, even with having the right settings in developer options set, and on the Google Play app. YOU don't know when OnePlus is going to release an unrootable update/upgrade. This is why any major upgrade needs to be vetted before it is installed, it is very important that the phone will be rootable after the upgrade is done, and most importantly, that the upgrade isn't going to introduce any issues to the device that the user didn't have before.

I was highly tempted to downgrade back to Android 10 but decided to give Android 11 a try to see if there's any issues, now that I had it. So far, there are no issues to report, everything is still fast as it was before, there isn't any battery drains, nothing.

I am right now afraid of connecting my phone to my wifi network. I turned off WiFi on my phone, turned on data saver, and removed any app that was pre-set to use unrestricted data. I know that no large (GB worth of files) isn't going to download by itself with WiFi turned off and data saver turned on. What I will be doing next is hunting for the system app responsible for pushing these unwanted forced upgrades and removing them from the device (after making a backup of it). I was open to installing system upgrades on my time, completely under my control, after fully vetting it, making sure that it's rootable without any issues, it's stable, and my critical root apps aren't going to stop working or have any problems under it. But now, I am very upset that Android isn't respecting my options set under Developer Options, and the updates are still being auto-downloaded and auto-installed.

Upon doing my preliminary research today, I see other users have experienced this same exact problem, there was a user that reports having downgraded from Android 11 to Android 10 over 15 times so far, tried something else to disable the updating only for it to happen again. He explains that the updating happens somewhere around 2 to 3 in the morning, which coincides with the time my phone was displaying on the lock screen today at 11 AM when I woke up, the time it was displaying was somewhere around 2:30 I REALLY thought I had overslept until I unlocked the phone and discovered the surprise. I take it that this was the time that the upgrade happened, and for some reason, there was a bug that caused the time to get stuck until I unlocked the phone and the upgrade finished installing.

If anyone knows the name of the system app that I can disable/remove in order to prevent the updating from happening automatically, please let me know, I would like to connect to my WiFi network again without any fears that what happened today would repeat itself again in the future.

Again, I have no problems with installing updates, I just want to do so on my terms, I don't want OnePlus or anyone else to forcefully decide for me and override my settings. I want to vet everything that gets installed/upgraded on my device. I own my device and I should have a saw when and HOW it gets installed.