OnePlus is announcing its first Android 15 update today as a beta of OxygenOS 15. The new OS version is available first to the OnePlus 12 and should expand over the coming months.
For this Android 15 and OxygenOS 15 release, OnePlus is focusing on a few key areas that might sound familiar if you know the story of OnePlus and software. For one, they really want you to know how much work they put in to making this even faster and smoother, plus they’ve reduced a lot of the size/bloat of OxygenOS (for future devices), updated some UI design elements, and there is a bunch of AI going on, because of course there is.
OxygenOS 15 is fast…and so smooth
OnePlus devices have always been some of the smoothest to use, yet OnePlus spent what appears to be a ridiculous amount of effort trying to make things even faster and smoother for Android 15. I’m not kidding here. I sat through a briefing on the new OxygenOS 15 and they ran a demo for something like 15 minutes on how smooth icon opening and closing can be. Just opening and closing. Opening. Closing. Over and over and over again. If they were trying to get the point across, they certainly did.
OnePlus has deployed something called Parallel Processing for this to happen and the explanation for how it works is probably far too technical for this blog. All you need to know is that your OnePlus phone should never slow and always look beautifully smooth no matter the load. So yeah – faster and smoother.
Less bloat, more storage for you
This won’t affect any of you at the moment, unless you end up buying the OnePlus 13 in the coming months, but OxygenOS 15 reduces the system storage by 20% compared to OxygenOS 14. That could be 5GB of extra space for you to use.
Again, this reclaimed storage space won’t magically appear when Android 15 lands on your OnePlus 12, but going forward, new phones should give you the additional space.
Design refreshes
As a part of this update to Android 15, OnePlus is touching on a number of UI elements to make the experience at least feel somewhat new even if this isn’t a massive redesign. They’ve enhanced charging and unlocking effects, refined the Gaussian blur when in and out of the notification area, redesigned icons, and tweaked the quick settings area to make brightness and volume controls more prominent.
They are bringing over their Open Canvas idea from the OnePlus Open too. This is a multi-tasking feature that lets you run multiple apps at the same time, with quick swipes up or down to expand an app to an almost-full view. It’s a nifty idea that lets you run two apps at once without feeling cramped into square boxes.
Oh yeah, AI everywhere!
Look, we don’t really hype AI that much around here because everyone is just repackaging the same AI tools over and over and most of them aren’t really that useful. Either that or they create a world that is not real and that’s not something we should all care that much about. Fake AI imagery and edited photos are bad. I’ve just got to say it.
Anyways, for OxygenOS 15 OnePlus is doing the following:
- AI Detail Boost: This AI feature takes photos that might look unusable and attempts to clean them up with AI processing. It could be good for zoom shots or if background details need to be brought-up. This is a cloud-based feature.
- AI Unblur: As the name suggests, this feature will attempt to unblur the blurry, like those messy shots of your kids or pets. It is a cloud-based feature.
- AI Reflection Eraser: Also cloud-based, the Reflection Eraser can remove both strong and subtle reflections that are terrorizing your photos.
- Intelligent Search: This feature works both in the cloud and on-device and is a search tool that lets you find info across settings, files, and notes. An example is of a search you perform that returns results of text from deep within a document on your phone. That could be handy.
- Circle to Search: Yep, OxygenOS 15 supports Google’s Circle to Search. You know what this is.
- AI Notes: Another cloud-based feature, AI Notes can organize your notes, make notes easier to read, correct grammar, adjust structure, and ensure everything is…I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.
- Gemini: In the OnePlus 13, Google’s Gemini will be officially integrated.
Share with iPhone app
And finally, as a part of OxygenOS 15, OnePlus is hoping that you’ll convince your iPhone friends to install their new O+Connect app, so that you can easily share files between your OnePlus phone and their iPhone. Good luck with that, but it is a thing.
OxygenOS 15 will go into open beta on October 30.
This post was last modified on October 24, 2024 8:49 am