OnePlus fans still prefer OxygenOS 11 to OxygenOS 10 despite former's heavily criticized One UI similarities

Android is a pretty diverse platform that spans across hundreds of different OEMs from just about every corner of the globe.

Each of these OEMs has its own different take on this operating system and that explains the countless custom Android skins in the market today, be it One UI, MIUI, EMUI, Funtouch OS, OxygenOS, and so on.

For as long as OnePlus has been around, it has gravitated towards a near-stock version of Android. We’re talking about the same company whose first device was powered by a Custom ROM (well, sort of).

The company’s OxygenOS has, for the past few iterations, maintained the same stock Android look and feel with a number of useful additions to spice up the user experience.

All that changed with OnePlus’ recent move to Android 11-based OxygenOS 11. This new skin is a stack contrast from OxygenOS 10 and other previous versions.

It borrows key design elements from Samsung’s One UI, adopting empty spaces and smart design all around the interface, reportedly in a bid to aid one-handed usability.

We recently ran a poll asking users what they feel about this rather massive shift in software design philosophy by the company.

In the poll, over 50% of our readers agreed that OnePlus may have made a mistake by moving further away from stock Android in OxygenOS 11.

On the other hand, close to 32% of voters said they are happy with the latest OxygenOS skin.

Well, fast-forward to today and another poll has been published on Reddit on the same matter. So far, over 66% of the total 280 voters are of the view that OxygenOS 11 is, in fact, much better than OxygenOS 10.

This should be music to the ears of OnePlus as user approval is one metric to assess user satisfaction. It looks like OxygenOS 11 is growing on OnePlus users already. An acquired taste maybe?

Many users point out that many of the bugs that are dogging their OxygenOS 11 experience are fixable as Android 11 is a pretty young operating system.

Here are some various user comments.

I agree that some designs aren’t great, the empty space for example. But they did this because of the “one hand” friendly style. Other than that everything seems similar to OxygenOS 10 to me.
Source

I reckon the thing that bugs me is are the subtle similarities to Samsung’s One UI.
Source

Except for one bug, I have no problems at all with OS11. Some apps can’t be updated after the OS update. But it seems to be fixable via clean installing the OS11 again (issue with Google account?). Haven’t tried it yet because most apps are still able to update.
Source

At the time of writing, OxygenOS 11 is available for users of the OnePlus 8 series of devices, along with OnePlus 8T that came with it out of the box.

We have an OxygenOS 11 update tracker to keep tabs on this update’s rollout to eligible devices.

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

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