OxygenOS to get multiple new enhancements: one-handed mode, backported OnePlus 7T camera features, hide notch, & more

OnePlus is no longer an underdog in the smartphone business following its quick rise to find itself on just about every smartphone enthusiast’s lips.

The deal with T-Mobile and Sprint is a statement on its own despite the shaky U.S.-China relations. The continued excellent support the company provides for its devices coupled with listening to what the customer wants make it very hard to dislike OnePlus and all they’ve achieved.

Once a smartphone is out there, not much can be done to improve the hardware that shipped out of the box. The only way to improve the performance of the device is through software updates. Regular software updates for that matter.

OnePlus not only excels at sending out software updates regularly, but it also does so with timeliness in mind. Case in point is the latest OxygenOS 10 based on Android 10 that rolled out less than three weeks after Google Pixels received the OTA.

For comparison purposes, Samsung, a bigger company than OnePlus by far, has only opened the Galaxy S10 One UI 2.0 beta (Android 10) program in the U.S., Europe, and Korea this week.

To make OxygenOS even better, OnePlus is now promising to bring multiple new enhancements to the custom skin through future updates.

In a OnePlus 7T AMA held on the official OnePlus forums, OnePlus staff members had an eventful day responding to some feature requests from fans and we’ve picked out a few interesting ones.

OnePlus 7T to get option to hide the notch

When asked if the OnePlus 7T will get the option to hide the notch, OnePlus Software Product Manager Zed Z confirmed that the company is indeed optimizing this option for the 7T, but there was no mention of when to expect it.

OnePlus 7T & 7T Pro software camera tricks coming to OnePlus 7 & 7 Pro

On paper, its easy to assume that the OnePlus 7 series and OnePlus 7T series share the same camera hardware. However, the OnePlus team disagrees with this. Granted, it won’t be possible to bring the hardware-based camera changes in the 7T to the standard OP7 series.

What is possible, though, is bringing all the software changes that OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro camera comes with to the older 7 and 7 Pro pair. And according to OnePlus, these new tricks will eventually land on the OnePlus 7 Pro.

No, the camera hardware is not the same as 7 Pro. We made some adjustments to the lens structure and stacking, so you can enjoy the macro mode feature on 7T and 7T Pro. This cannot come as a software update to 7 Pro devices. Besides that, all the other software improvements will come for 7 Pro.
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Unfortunately, there won’t be a macro mode for OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro users because that’s a hardware thingy.

Our image team is constantly testing new software changes and rolling out to OTA. Except for the hardware difference, the image processing version on the 7T series will also come to 7 series. For macro mode, we changed the lens stacking structure on the 7T series, so it won’t be able to come to 7 series with software updates.
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With the new lens positioning on the 7T series, OnePlus says “the laser on the back offers better production yield and improves lens stacking efficiency.”

OxygenOS one-handed mode is in the works

Another nifty feature that was requested by one OxygenOS fan was the support for one-handed mode. A crucial feature it is for devices the size of the OnePlus 7 Pro and OnePlus 7T Pro and apparently, OnePlus says it is already working to bring this feature to OxygenOS.

Warp Charge 30 vs Warp Charge 30T

With the new OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro came a brand new fast charging tech from OnePlus. The former gets what OnePlus calls Warp Charge 30 while the latter Warp Charge 30T. You might be wondering what’s the difference between these two.

Well, according to the company, the adapters that come inside the respective boxes labeled Warp Charge 30 and Warp Charge 30T are the same, but the differences between these two fast charging technologies are in the smartphones themselves.

Warp Charge 30T is a little faster than Warp Charge 30, which is a no-brainer considering the 7T Pro is a superior model to the standard 7T.

Pro mode support for the OnePlus 7T’s ultra-wide-angle camera being discussed

Both the OnePlus 7T and OnePlus 7T Pro come with a 16MP wide-angle lens that is definitely one of the most liked lenses in the three-unit setup. While OnePlus has freed this lens to work independently, there is no pro mode support that would let users capture ultra-wide-angle RAW images.

On the brighter side, OnePlus says they are discussing about adding this pro mode to the wide-angle lens on the 7T series, but of course, nothing concrete has been agreed upon so far.

We notice that ultra wide angle camera is among the most popular features of this triple camera system, and we are having new discussion about our future plan for this camera, of course, pro mode support is included in our discussion.
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There are still tens of unanswered feature requests and questions about OxygenOS in general that OnePlus hasn’t responded to in the OnePlus 7T AMA. But the team has promised to keep responding to these queries in the coming days.

We will follow up on their developments and update this post with any interesting stuff we find. Tune in to our OnePlus section to get the story once we have the updates.

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