Ask our Software Team: Part 4 - OxygenOS

Szymon K., Nov 16, 2018 :

Thanks for your questions guys! Addressing most "liked" ones and those that repeated most often:

We've decided that instead of this way of skipping songs, would be better to just use off-screen gestures. You can draw ">" to go to a next song. Options like double tapping power button or holding it for a second cause conflict with other actions (launching camera or Google Assistant).

We're striving to make using our smartphones with one hand as easy as possible, hence i.e. gestures to drag down quick toggles, moving navigation to the bottom of the screen in multiple apps or rearranging position of key icons. But when it comes to the solution of having bigger blank space on top - we've tried it before Android Pie and we received a lot of negative feedback from you guys, saying that it's a poor use of space. Somehow, it has to be about a balance between convenient use with one hand, but also productive use with both hands.

I understand that by "pure black theme" you guys mean theme that'd have Black #00000 as a background for apps. I've spoken with many of you, and I understood that primarily reason for you to request for it is that you want to save some battery. In fact though, difference between what could be saved with current dark theme vs what could be with pure black is not major at all, while design-wise, experience would be not too appealing.

Working in India: for me, best part of India are the people! Vast majority is super friendly, kind and open. Food is amazing as well. When it comes to worst, probably no surprise: traffic.

We're considering Google Feed, even testing it internally, but for now, we're more focused on making Shelf even more useful and unique.

I didn't even know Toy Story 4 is in plans, I think I've only seen the first one of the series, so not excited at all . Super excited about GoT though and couple of other shows coming back next year.

We still have the option of clearing cache for each app, but the thing about clearing cache is that it has downsides. Each app has to rebuild it after opening, and it will consume additional resources, like battery or potentially mobile data.

Advanced optimization is all about learning usage patterns and being more strict when it comes to waking up apps in the background. Imagine that you have an app that you're using once a year, i.e. to buy a flight tickets, and you don't care about it until you're planning your next trip. But this app might want to wake up in the background couple of times a day, i.e. to send you promotional notifications. We're preventing it in a smart way to improve battery life.

And thanks for the hair compliment! Not doing much though, using same Polish hair product for last 12 years or so.

To address all the Android Pie update questions: we've committed to update OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T, OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T, and we'll certainly deliver. But as always, we're not sharing any ETAs. Please, be patient fam,

Huge sentiment to my white OnePlus One, but I think my fave would be Midnight Black from OnePlus 6 or OnePlus 6T,

When it comes to accent color, we made our next step with applying dark theme to OnePlus applications, and we'll see about the next steps. Color in apps is more complicated, especially after we've given the option to pick literally any color you guys want.

I'm happy to be part of OxygenOS team for most of it's existence, and obviously we wouldn't be doing something we don't love using ourselves

When it comes to HydrogenOS - there's one product team working on both OxygenOS and HydrogenOS, and of course specifics of Chinese market determine certain approach and differences, but system level and vast majority of features remains the same.

Personally, I believe it's way too early to plan for foldable phones, as technology will be maturing for years before those would really be useful - if that even will be a direction for us or the industry.

Regarding status bar block - that's an interesting idea, we'll research more with users and consider this scenario.

We've heard from Indian users that usage circumstances of this feature is different in here, as the way users use their phones and approach privacy is bit different. We're keeping it in mind and we'll consider it in future roadmaps.

When it comes to my favourite non-OnePlus phone, I think I'd go with last phone I had before OnePlus One - Nexus 4. Slim, with unique design, good software experience - really liked this one.

Thank you all for you answers, and till next time!