OxygenOS is the foundation of the OnePlus 3T’s Great User Experience

OxygenOS has been OnePlus’s default and primary ROM for almost two years now, first released for the OnePlus One as a flashable zip for users to break away from the increasingly-unsupported but excellent CyanogenMod S ROMs their phone originally shipped with.

This software offering took center-stage with the OnePlus 2 back in 2015, a year full of devices we mostly remember for their flaws rather than their virtues. The OnePlus 2 itself almost encompassed all of the issues many people had with 2015 flagships — its Snapdragon 810 held it back, it removed up-and-coming features like NFC for no good reason, and then offered me-too (or me-first) hardware that wasn’t properly utilized, like the Type-C port devoid of USB 3.0 speeds or fast charging. OnePlus had a really good thing with their original “flagship killer”, but they blew it with their sequel, the punchline being the comical label of “2016 flagship killer”. The OnePlus 2 was an exercise in disappointing compromises, yet there was a short period of time through which I used that device exclusively despite having prettier, faster, and less-compromised smartphones within my reach. It was all thanks to OxygenOS, the one redeeming quality that allowed me to enjoy the OnePlus 2.

OxygenOS back then was a lot more bare-bones than it is now, with a slightly different design philosophy. Back at their originally unveiling ahead of the OnePlus 2’s launch, we learned that OnePlus wanted to create a slim and fast experience, not unlike the CyanogenMod 11S ROM their first phone shipped with. The AMAs with the software team further revealed that they were emphasizing staying close to stock, but adding tactful features that could only add to the experience. They somewhat nailed it with their first attempt, and OxygenOS was indeed extremely close to Stock Android, with relatively-fast performance on the OnePlus 2 and some features that preemptively emulated future features from the then-upcoming Marshmallow, while borrowing some custom ROM favorites as well.

The Good

In a way, custom ROMs were part of Oxygen’s DNA — by then, the OnePlus One already built a reputation among enthusiasts for being developer-friendly, and plenty of users loved the fact that they could get whatever feature or customization they wanted going on it. It was no surprise, then, that OxygenOS – a ROM that was also developed by some legacy custom ROM developers that OnePlus hired – would offer a similar feel; it really felt like a lightweight custom ROM in many ways, though with a higher degree of consumer-grade polish (granted, it still had a long way to go, as we’ll detail below).

It was with the OnePlus 3 that OxygenOS really got to shine. No longer was the lightweight ROM overburdened by faulty silicon — now it packed a faster, more-efficient Snapdragon 820 flanked by a copious 6GB of RAM and zippy UFS 2.0 storage. The OnePlus 3’s OxygenOS kept all of what made the original great, then further added to its feature set once more, in tactful and measured ways. I would go as far as saying that my initial impressions with OxygenOS on the OnePlus 3 beat those I’ve had with both any other OEM stock ROM, and even recent OxygenOS releases that haven’t matched the surprise I found while originally reviewing the device. It was a breath of fresh air, and while we see a relatively larger number of OEMs offering Stock Android ROMs today, I think OnePlus nailed it there and then. Some Nougat features, speedy responsiveness, a proper dark theme to make use of the device’s AMOLED panel, and an aesthetically-pleasing UI were all positives I loved from the get-go. Then OnePlus had to change some of that, momentarily.

The Ugly

The OnePlus 3’s Community Builds adopted a new user interface that deviated from the Stock approach of the original OxygenOS, changing colors and generally making it less attractive with worse proportions and animations in system UI elements like the notification panel, recents menu and settings. This wasn’t surprising when one considers that these changes were instrumental in the eventual merger of the OxygenOS and HydrogenOS frameworks.

The company figured out that a unified team working on a unified base with different application layers could help speed up updates, and address one of the more-criticized aspects of previous devices. The Community Builds, then, were growing pains that culminated in the (luckily short-lived) Marshmallow stock ROM for the OnePlus 3T. The concept of having community builds with various testing channels is brilliant and a great community engine, but at the time, said updates had disappointed me.

It felt like change for the sake of change, perhaps a petty compromise between Hydrogen and Oxygen

In my OnePlus 3T review, I noted I wasn’t a big fan of this new approach to software. While it didn’t deviate too much from the original OxygenOS, none of the changes felt clever or meaningful, and none improved upon the simplicity and effortlessness of the original package.

It felt like change for the sake of change, perhaps a petty compromise between HydrogenOS and OxygenOS, given both featured such disparate design philosophies. Enthusiast outcry and fan feedback ensued, and the company reversed the change with the Nougat update, which offers a Pixel-like blue for its default accent color and a more traditional user interface. It was at this point where OxygenOS not only redeemed itself, but also became my favorite flavor of Android– finally surpassing the Pixel XL’s, which I held in the highest regard.

The Bad

OxygenOS has also had (and overcame) many hurdles and criticism. Some of its more pointless features stubbornly remain in there, such as the Shelf feature which was permissible on the OnePlus 2, as it was a promise of things to come, yet is still a not worthy contender today. There have been numerous conscious decisions and unconscious mistakes, though, that temporarily opaqued the better parts of the ROM. For example, upon the release of the OnePlus 3, OxygenOS was massively underutilizing the hardware of the device. I was one of the few that called this out and proposed a solution, and OnePlus was quick to act and react to the criticism by modifying its settings and allowing for more apps to remain in the background. Still, it made us all ponder, why would they not allow their 6GB smartphone to actually offer the capabilities they proudly advertised?

Another short-lived complaint was the exclusion of an sRGB mode to balance out the saturated default calibration of OnePlus’ “Optic AMOLED” panel. The company set out to make its display stand out and went as far as giving it its own buzzword, yet it turned out to be extremely color inaccurate and saturated, and it even displayed some banding and contrast issues off the bat. AnandTech and independent reporters were quick to point this out, and OnePlus offered reviewers an OTA with a proposed fix which quickly trickled down to consumer builds. It was, once more, a quick fix, but it still begs the question: why would OnePlus advertise Optic AMOLED as a better viewing experience, when no metrics backed that up? Especially since the changes were mostly calibration, which wasn’t well-received at launch (luckily, sRGB mode ended up being surprisingly color-accurate).

And that’s not all. We also caught OnePlus cheating on benchmarks, through a code block that specifically targeted certain application packages by name, and then adjusted scaling behavior to minimize score variance. This was unacceptable and the company addressed it quickly enough, but at the same time, once more it makes us wonder: why would they? It’s not like it introduced critical gains, it’s not like the OnePlus 3 couldn’t sustain class-leading performance without artificial cheating mechanisms. We suspect that it might have been a result of the merger between the two different software teams, but that wouldn’t excuse the previously-mentioned decisions.

Nor would it excuse a plethora of decisions that raised our concerns over the phone’s security and software integrity, with some of the problems we reported like IMEI leaking being wholly within their knowledge and control. None of this can be dismissed, even if it doesn’t directly impact our forward-facing UX (the point of this article).

I do take solace in the fact that OnePlus has been addressing all of these issues, however, and listening to feedback from its forum-goers and enthusiasts from communities like XDA and reddit, as well as reviewers. We’ve actually influenced OxygenOS and prompted OnePlus to fix issues, remove non-sense or add or refine useful functionality. The company is clearly open to feedback, and while they have messed up their software support on previous devices, they seem to committed enough to the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T. Which brings me to my next and final point.

One of OnePlus’ Crown Jewels

It is actually really impressive, from a customer’s perspective, to see OxygenOS evolve so much with such frequent updates and ongoing feature inclusions. It has seen near-constant improvement, though not always consistent. In this regard, OnePlus has redeemed itself from the atrocious support that its older devices received (and are still suffering). If ignoring the OnePlus X and OnePlus 2 was instrumental in achieving a better user experience on the OnePlus 3, then I am inclined to say it was a smart decision for the future of the company. Truth be told, OxygenOS has improved a lot and has adopted many, many new and useful features while cleaning up its mistakes and embracing a new personality through UI refinements. All of this wasn’t without growing pains, and it’s been a tumultuous ride at times, but when I look at the final package I can’t help but recognize the software is near-perfect for the demographic I belong to, the niche I am part of (and you probably are too), and what I personally expect from my device.

I am not the kind of person that believes Stock Android is an intrinsic good and a positive aspect of whatever phone decides to feature it, either. In fact, I find myself liking OxygenOS, and even TouchWiz for that matter, now that they are further from Stock — it just needs to be done right. The short-lived community builds pre-Nougat hadn’t done it well enough, just like Samsung’s awkward and early half-baked adoption of Material Design hadn’t done it right either. Now, both OxygenOS and TouchWiz have found their own identity and a matching UI that enables both to offer the features they need for the people they target. Not all OEM ROMs have been evolving equally in the past couple of years, and in my opinion, none have done it better than OxygenOS in the end, not even TouchWiz which I also believe has been getting a lot better.

It’s not that it’s close to Stock, but that it’s close-enough in all the right places, and that it changes what could use a better solution. It’s also not that it’s just fast, but that it’s as fast as I expect from this hardware. The features they added are ones I use frequently, such as scrolling screenshots and quick capture editing, and while they aren’t unique (Samsung, in particular, has introduced much of this way before), they are implemented rather seamlessly at no expense to the user. There are still bits and pieces to address (I, for one, would like to see more customization) but considering that this ROM was a quick patch to a rough legal problem, devised just over two years ago, OnePlus has done a very good job with OxygenOS and it makes for an exceptional daily driver.

What do you think of Oxygen OS? I want to hear your opinion as well, so sound off below!

Cutting corners in a cut-throat market

Any press is good press, or so they say. That’s a phrase often used when a company finds itself in a precarious situation — but as Samsung learned first hand, in a hyperactive segment like this ever changing mobile space, the smallest misstep can turn out to have grave ramifications.

Huawei is learning this first hand with the negative press surrounding its recently-launched P10 and P10 Plus series of devices. They are no stranger to negative press surrounding the quality of their hardware. First came the Nexus 6P build quality debacle with shattering visors and bending devices, and recently the Honor 6X screen and build quality issues notched another one in their belt. One would think they would be walking a finer line when it comes to their smartphones, but the latest news surrounding them says otherwise.

As Aamir wrote about in an earlier article, Huawei is in the midst of a controversy due to how it handles its flagships’ components. They have already admitted to sourcing components from various sources, but further investigation is showing that these components feature vastly different technologies and capabilities from RAM speeds to the type of internal memory that is used. Utilizing components from various sources is a very common practice among OEM’s. Samsung does this with its cameras in its flagships known to alternate between its own ISOCELL sensor and a Sony one. Apple does this with its SOC’s alternating between Samsung and TSMC for manufacturing (which has brought its share of negative press) and it is widely known that HTC sources its displays from multiple partners too. 

Batteries, displays, cameras, internal storage, and RAM can all be sourced from various partners. This helps supply chain constraints and it can also help with quality assurance… generally, it is perfectly fine. What is not fine is when these components offer vastly differing experiences depending on your luck of the draw, which is what Huawei is offering right now. While many users may never notice a difference between LPDDR3 and LPDDR4 or UFS 2.1 and eMMC 5.1; there is a quantifiable difference, and when you are paying flagship prices every customer deserves the same or at the very least a similar experience. By giving users a random combination of RAM and storage types, their customers aren’t buying a flagship, but a lottery ticket for a chance to earn the full product Huawei advertised.

Unlike other cases of component variety with a smartphone line, a large part of Huawei’s advertising relied entirely on the flagship components a user might have. Huawei, like many other Chinese manufacturers, puts a clear and heavy emphasis on marketing their devices’ power and performance. It’s no surprise, then, that they’d pick the faster RAM and UFS2.1 storage as talking points for their ad campaigns and promotional materials. In fact UFS2.1 was advertised for all markets of the Mate 9 as recently as last week; however, today only a few market pages actually show that specification. Obviously, though, it becomes a problem when a significant portion of P10 customers may not get the UFS 2.1 storage, or the LPDDR4 RAM, or both. People paid for a flagship under the notion that they’d get a flagship, with flagship components throughout. When people pay for a Samsung device, ISOCELL and Sony sensors offer comparable performance with differences that, to my knowledge, haven’t shown significant and quantifiable deltas — there is a mostly-lateral difference between the two. There is a clear hierarchy between LPDDR4 and LPDDR3 RAM, however, and the same goes for UFS 2.1 and eMMC 5.1 storage.

A worrying aspect to much of this is what it means for what Huawei is as a company, and what it’s trying to do. Giving credit where it is due, Huawei devices have come a long way. The Mate 9 and Honor 8 Pro are fantastic phones offering a solid build, vastly-improved software, and an overall appealing package. Huawei is trying hard to break into the large and somewhat stagnant US market and while on the surface they have nearly all the components to succeed, the lack of good decision making from Huawei serves to undermine all that they have accomplished. It’s not just their phones that have this issue either.

The Huawei Watch was and still is one of the best Android Wear devices you can buy today; it has a stellar screen, fantastic look, excellent battery life, and more. But instead of capitalizing on its success, Huawei has made one of the most boring and uninteresting devices to date – the Huawei Watch 2.

Similarly, the Honor 5X was a solid piece of hardware crippled by its software, which can be easily remedied. But instead building on that solid foundation they release its successor – the Honor 6X – which ships with an out of date OS version, crippled build quality, and packs one of the least durable displays on the market. The P10, which we have been speaking about, also ships with no oleophobic coating which is not only a standout in the market (particularly its segment), but is also just dumb. The recent string of decisions from Huawei are troubling seeing as their success in the US market, which can greatly help them in the long run, depends largely on enthusiasts, positive media coverage and word of mouth at this time; and despite my largely positive experiences with the Honor 8 Pro and Mate 9 I am hesitant to recommend them friends and family. The North American market does not appreciate corner cutting, and Huawei is truly not breaking away from the stereotype that troubles Chinese manufacturers in the US so much.

While Huawei’s decision making in these past few months leaves a lot to be desired, there is still time for them to correct their course and get back to improving their offerings. They need to be cautious though, they do not have the clout of a company like Samsung which can fairly easily rebound from total meltdown. There were some who thought Samsung would never come out from what happened with the Note 7, but soon after the S8 announcement they are boasting some of the best preorder numbers yet. Huawei makes a compelling phone with software that is quickly catching up to the competition, they just need to make sure they don’t shoot themselves in the foot by poor decision making because in an ultra-competitive market, someone is always nipping at their heels.

What do you think about the P10’s hardware lottery? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook Spaces was announced at the social network’s F8 conference as a way of blending social media and virtual reality. If you own an Oculus Rift (and Touch controllers), you and four friends can enter a virtual world and hang out together.

Unfortunately, hanging out mostly constitutes of chatting, taking “selfies*” and enjoying the virtual world around you. Oh, and it’s not you, per se, but a cartoon caricature that you control; a dead-eyed digital mannequin that smiles blankly at everyone in the desperate hope that you won’t find it creepy.

Unfortunately, Spaces falls into the same trap that so many other platforms have over the years, assuming that people want the digital world to be a surrogate for the real. And that people have the time and energy to sit around talking to a cartoon with their friend’s voice through thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Whenever a high-minded tech company makes proclamations about the future of social interaction, I’m reminded of Second Life. Founded more than a decade ago, the title was an open world platform that enabled strangers across the world to come together. It was touted as a digital utopia, a place where you were free to create whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, however you wanted. Your digital avatar could even fly around the Second Life universe, interacting with people from across the globe.

But in reality, this utopianism was misplaced, and the environment, even during its boom years, was stale and empty. People weren’t all that into into communicating with each other, and the platform gradually became a space for people to develop weird forms of architecture. It became little more than a proto-Minecraft, a gallery space or weird and wonderful designs that few would ever notice. Second Life itself still exists, of course, with around 600,000 monthly active users.

A big part of the internet’s job is to bring people together in ways that we wouldn’t — couldn’t — have conceived a few generations ago. We can now learn so much from people all across the globe and share their experiences, dreams and knowledge. Real-time chat platforms, from IRC to FaceTime, have enabled us to gradually bridge the physical distances that separate us. Still, none are a substitute for real human interaction, face to face, in the real world.

Facebook Spaces, on the other hand, places two more barriers between us and our friends: the bulky VR headset and the digital avatar. Then there are the constraints that Facebook places upon its users. At the moment, Spaces users can’t express sadness or anger. The likelihood of this becoming the new normal for social interactions is about as likely as Disney’s recently shuttered Club Penguin becoming the new Facebook.

Facebook is asking us to take a chunk of our most precious commodity — our attention — and give it entirely to its virtual world. But that world is one step removed from that of the internet, full of (literally) fake people in a fake place. In the demo video, friends gather together a surprise birthday party to take a selfie of themselves on an imaginary boardwalk.

But where is the reality and authenticity in you, and three other people, taking an image of some cartoon avatars in a virtual world? Will you expect that future historians will unearth these images and marvel at the experiences that you pretended to have?

I wonder if I’m wrong, and that people will embrace this in the same way that they have taking pictures from inside video games. But then that, at least, shows a journey that you’re going on — and an appreciation of a particularly engaging sight that’s been created within the game. Imagine the reaction of your friends and family when you show them your vacation shots from the Grand Canyon that you didn’t visit.

Even Mark Zuckerberg knows that Facebook’s Social VR demo, as it is, not the future of how we’re going to interact with one another. Both this year and last, the CEO showed off a rough idea for an augmented reality platform that could work in a pair of glasses. There, you’d never need to buy a TV, just use the AR overlay in the lenses on conjure one up on the wall of your otherwise sparse living room.

Unfortunately, that idea is nowhere near ready for the real world, and Facebook VP Deb Liu told the AP that the journey to that hardware was “just one percent finished.” Imagine, rather than exchanging time-sucking pleasantries with a cartoon avatar while standing on a fake mountaintop, having someone sitting on your couch next to you.

You’d be able to speak to them as if they were in the room, despite being on the other side of the world. But with this (almost) real interaction, you would have real eye contact, real body language and all of the other things that we, as humans, need in order to feel comfortable interacting with one another.

The software and hardware just isn’t there for this sort of platform, and probably won’t be for a very long time. But that, not Facebook Spaces, is the vision of social VR that I can get behind.

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* Technically not a selfie, since it’s not the person taking a photo.