OnePlus can’t seem to keep out of the news lately and today they are being talked about again but this time for a good reason — their new Oreo Beta for the OnePlus 5T.
The release of a third beta for the OnePlus 5T is hardly newsworthy considering that it is still very much beta and requires more work before it could be called stable. Today’s Oreo beta build brings several changes:
- Added a pickup gesture for the Phone app, including the ability to choose slide up or down to answer the phone (currently it is the opposite way to the Google Pixel 2 — sorry to all those I’ve hung up on in the last couple of weeks)
- Removed Clipboard function due to feedback
- Added CPU security patch CVE-2017-13218
- Added new Navigation gestures that you can enable by going into settings and disabling the navigation bar
The Clipboard was removed after unproven and inacurate claims it was logging users data and sending it back to China. It turns out the Clipboard code that collects the information is only operational in the HydrogenOS for the Chinese market but as they share a beta ROM this app is shared but is non-functional in the international OnePlus 5T. OnePlus decided to remove it anyway to stave off any perceived problems and keep the PR positive.
The big addition is the navigation gestures. Having used them before on an old Meizu phone (MX4 if my memory serves me correctly) I can say that they are extremely useful once you get used to using them. It wasn’t Apply who did them first with the iPhone X but they have made it popular lately.
The gestures are active once the navigation bar is turned off in settings. Swiping up from the left or right hand side of the bottom of the display is equivalent to the back button. Swiping up from the centre of the bottom of the display is home and swiping up in the centre and holding is the app switcher (recents). I am not sure where the split screen can now be activated from.
Check out the excellent video our friends at DroidLife made of the gestures in operation:
I am yet to install this on my OnePlus 5T Star Wars edition because of the issues it has with maintaining the Star Wars theme but by all accounts the new gestures work well and are being well received. Good on OnePlus for thinking outside the Android box with their navigation and hopefully it makes it into a stable build soon.
What do you think of these gestures? Want them or not?
Also available on OnePlus 5.