The big day has finally arrived for OnePlus 7, 7 Pro, 7T, and 7T Pro owners
OnePlus may not have much left up its sleeve ahead of tomorrow's big 9-series announcement event, but owners of several of the company's older high-end smartphones are reportedly receiving a nice "surprise" today awaited for many months now.
Camera
Ambient Display
Dark Mode
Game Space
Shelf
Gallery
Following in the footsteps of last year's 5G-enabled Nord mid-ranger, as well as the premium OnePlus 8 family also released in 2020, 2019's OnePlus 7, 7 Pro, 7T, and 7T Pro are finally ready to leave Android 10 behind and embrace the latest version of the world's most popular mobile OS in its stable form.
While OnePlus has already published the full Android 11 changelog for the slightly newer 7T and 7T Pro models on its official forum, the news about the same update currently making its way to the Snapdragon 855-powered 7 and 7 Pro comes from the typically reliable folks over at XDA Developers, which means the rollouts are probably happening.
Of course, as highlighted by the company itself, only a "limited number of users" are set to get the over-the-air goodie packs today, with global expansions expected to take place "in a few days after making sure there are no critical bugs." Based on what happened to the aforementioned Nord not long ago, perhaps it would be more accurate for OnePlus to promise wide-scale Android 11 deliveries for the 7 and 7T duos if no "critical bugs" are identified in the next few days.
Unfortunately, a fairly large number of users is already complaining about quite a few issues, most frequently related to the camera app, although it's a little too early to know if any of these will be considered serious enough to cause a halt in the updating operations of the four OnePlus 7-series handsets or the company will simply try to fix them with future maintenance updates.
You could obviously wait and see these bugs ironed out before taking a chance on what might feel like a half-baked OxygenOS 11 build, although we can also definitely understand if you're done waiting. Keep in mind that the Always On Display (AOD) functionality is still not ready for primetime on these otherwise beautiful and extremely sharp devices, and the February 2021 security patch rollout isn't exactly... impressive as we near the end of March.
All that being said, here are the detailed Android 11 release notes for the OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro (and presumably, the OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro as well):
System
- Update to OxygenOS 11 version
- Fresh new UI visual design brings you a more comfortable experience with various optimizations of details
- Optimize the stability of some third-party applications and improve the experience
- Updated Android Security Patch to 2021.02
- Updated GMS package to 2021.01
- Since this is the upgrade of Android 11 version with many new features, the upgrade time may be longer. Please wait for the completion of the upgrade
- Updated the camera UI and optimized some of the function paths to offer more convenient operation
- Newly added HEVC codec to reduce video storage size seamlessly, capture and shoot more without compromising on quality
- Newly added access to a third-party app to share the picture by pressing and holding it in preview
- Newly added the quick access to recording mode by pressing and holding the shutter button and by sliding the button, you can easily zoom in or zoom out
- Newly added the playback display in Time-lapse mode to show the actual filming time
Ambient Display
- Newly added Insight clock style, a joint creation with Parsons School of Design. It will change according to the phone usage data (To set: Settings > Customization > Clock on ambient display)
- Newly added Canvas feature that can automatically draw a wireframe picture based on a lock screen photo on your phone（Path: Settings - Customization - Wallpaper - Canvas - Choose photo preview and it can be generated automatically）
Dark Mode
- Added the shortcut key for Dark Mode, pull down the quick setting to enable
- Supporting automatically turn on feature & customize time range (path: Settings - Display - Dark Mode - Turn on automatically - Automatically enable from sunset to sunrise/Custom time range)
- Newly added gaming tools box for convenient switches of Fnatic mode. You can now choose three ways of notifications: text-only, heads up and block, just for your immersive gaming experience
- Newly added quick reply feature in a small window for Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram (Enable it by swiping down from upper right/left corners of the screen in gaming mode)
- Newly added mis-touch prevention feature. Enable it, swipe down from the top of the screen, click and the notification bar will pop out
- Newly shelf interface design, the interface is clearer
- Added weather widget, animation effect smarter
Gallery
- Supporting Story function, automatically form weekly videos with photos and video in storage
- Optimize the loading speed of the gallery, and the image preview is faster
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