Android 11 Open Beta Released for OnePlus 8 Series

As a part of today’s Android 11 release news, OnePlus has announced the first open beta of Android 11 for the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro. If you own either device, you can start testing Android 11 and the big changes to OxygenOS right now.

The update is quite large for the OnePlus 8 series and heavily tweaks the UI to look less like the OxygenOS you know and love, and more like Samsung’s One UI. It does bring an always-on display, though, so at least we have that. There’s a new dark mode toggle too, new clock styles, new themes for Zen Mode, a new story function in the OnePlus Gallery app, and more.

The full list of changes is as follows:

• System
  • Fresh new UI visual design brings you more comfortable experience with various optimizations of details
  • Brand new weather UI supports dynamic switches between sunrise and sunset. You can have day and night at your hand now
  • Optimized the brightness bar display in status bar, enabling you to quickly adjust it by pulling down quick settings.
• Game space
  • Newly added gaming tools box for convenient switches of Fnatic mode, WeChat, QQ and Screen Recorder at one place (Enable it by swiping down from upper right/left corners of the screen in gaming mode)
  • Newly added mis-touch preventionfeature. Enable it, swipe down from the top of the screen, click and the notification bar will pop out
• Ambient display
  • Added Always-on ambient Display function, custom Schedule / All day option included. Path: Settings – Display – Ambient Display.
  • Added 10 new clock styles. Path: Settings – Customization – Clock Style
  • Newly added Insight clock style, a joint creation with Parsons School of Design. It will change according to the phone usage data. ( To set: Settings>Customization>Clock Style)
• Dark mode
  • Added the shortcut key for Dark Mode, pull down the quick setting to enable.
  • Supporting automatically turn on feature & customize time range. path: Settings – Display – Dark Mode – Turn on automatically – Automatically enable from sunset to sunrise / Custom time range.
• Zen Mode
  • Added 5 new themes (ocean, space, grassland, Zen space1,Zen space2), and more timing options.
  • Included the Group feature in Zen Mode, now you can invite your friends and enable the Zen Mode together
• Gallery
  • Supporting Story function, automatically form weekly videos with photos and video in storage.

If you’d like to get this update on your phone and take it for a spin, it’s pretty easy to do. You’ll hit the link below, download the proper Android 11 Open Beta 1 file for your phone, place the file on your phone, then head into Settings -> System -> System Updates -> Click top right icon -> Local upgrade -> and choose the file.

Keep in mind that you can update from stable Android 10 to this Android 11 Open Beta without wiping your phone or losing data. However, in order to return back to the stable channel for OTA updates, you’ll need to rollback and that will wipe your phone.

Download OnePlus 8, OnePlus 8 Pro Android 11 Beta