Google released Android 11 to Pixel devices earlier today and announced that phones from partners such as Oppo, Realme, Xiaomi, and OnePlus will also begin receiving the update soon. Now, OnePlus has announced that it is making available the first open beta for the Android 11-based OxygenOS 11 update.
While the company has been releasing developer previews, the launch of the open beta signals the release of the OS nearing, as these releases are usually more stable. The firm also claims that it “one of the first smartphone brands” to bring Android 11 on the day it launched. However, this is still in the testing phase and will not be rolled out to all users right away.
As for OxygenOS 11 itself, the firm is tweaking the UI to make it more comfortable for single-handed use. It also posted an explainer on the design changes. The open beta brings all those changes, which include UI changes, the addition of the much-awaited Always-On Display feature, dark mode improvements, and much more.
Here is the complete changelog:
- System
- Fresh new UI visual design brings you more comfortable experience with various optimizations of details
- Brand new weather UI supports dynamic switches between sunrise and sunset. You can have day and night at your hand now
- Optimized the brightness bar display in status bar, enabling you to quickly adjust it by pulling down quick settings.
- Game space
- Newly added gaming tools box for convenient switches of Fnatic mode, WeChat, QQ and Screen Recorder at one place (Enable it by swiping down from upper right/left corners of the screen in gaming mode)
- Newly added mis-touch preventionfeature. Enable it, swipe down from the top of the screen, click and the notification bar will pop out
- Ambient display
- Added Always-on ambient Display function, custom Schedule / All day option included. Path: Settings – Display – Ambient Display.
- Added 10 new clock styles. Path: Settings – Customization – Clock Style
- 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 Style)
- 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.
- Zen Mode
- Added 5 new themes (ocean, space, grassland, Zen space1,Zen space2), and more timing options.
- Included the Group feature in Zen Mode, now you can invite your friends and enable the Zen Mode together
- Gallery
- Supporting Story function, automatically form weekly videos with photos and video in storage.
The firm notes that the update packages only apply to the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro. Users must have at least 3GB or more internal storage to install the update. The firm has provided instructions for the installation on its forum page. It has also provided the download links for the respective model based on the region.
Google’s efforts over the years to increase the pace of Android adoption led to Android 10 becoming the fasted adopted version of Android. With more additions made to Android 10 to help modularize the OS further, it will be interesting to see how quickly OEMs provide users an update to their versions of Android 11.