[Update: No proof yet] OnePlus OxygenOS 11 stable update to bring back front camera ring light feature, confirms staff

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on September 11, 2020) follows:

Smartphones have grown over the past few years, from boxy, rectangular gadgets to these elegant, edge-to-edge display gadgets with curvy displays and sometimes, hole-punches.

This push to edge-to-edge displays means that some of the features that would be added on the device’s face, like the notification lights, now have nowhere to be placed.

OEMs have become crafty in this regard and some phone-makers like Samsung introduced edge-lighting for their ‘edge-devices’.

These sides that flowed over the edges of the display would light up in the event of a notification, but that was only the beginning of this trend in the industry.

OnePlus makes some of the best smartphone hardware today and being a company that is rooted in serving the customer and building consumer-facing features into its devices, you would imagine that devices would convey the same.

Back in November 2019, we saw OnePlus tease a successor to the good old Notification LED that it took away with the launch of the OnePlus 6T. The feature which came to be known as Horizon Light or Notification Light animation was incorporated in OnePlus 7 Pro.

The feature then made its way to OnePlus 8 devices, essentially relegating the Notification LED to the history books as this feature worked a lot better than any notification LED, especially on the devices’ hole-punch AMOLED displays.

Since the OnePlus 8 series spotted a hole-punch display, the developer community got to work and we saw tweaks such as Arc Lighting and Energy Ring.

These tools took advantage of the area around the camera hole to simulate a notification light or even a battery indicator. How ingenius!

Now it’s coming to light that OnePlus could be planning to bring the front camera ring light feature officially via the OxygenOS 11 build. When asked by a user what plans the company has for the ring-light feature, a OnePlus staff says:

We will bring it back to the official OxygenOS 11 build (actually we are also looking for other solutions).

Could this mean that OnePlus plans to officially bring back the ‘Notification LED’ in form of the ring light with OxygenOS 11? Well, users must be on edge about this.

To recall, we have already seen the initial builds of OxygenOS 11 for OnePlus 8, most recently being the OxygenOS 11 Open Beta.

The stable OxygenOS 11 update has been available for the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro for a while now. However, we haven’t found any confirmation regarding whether the front camera ring light feature has been brought back.

Have you received the feature after installing the OxygenOS 11 update on your device? Do let us know via the comments section below.

NOTE: We have these and many more OnePlus stories in our dedicated OnePlus section.

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