The OnePlus 3 and 3T were the only two phones launched by the company last year and they were also two of the most popular smartphones of the year. With the 2017 flagship OnePlus 5 already in the market, OnePlus has brought its focus back to yesteryear’s flagships and has released a major beta update for the duo.
OnePlus has released a new update to the OnePlus 3 and 3T users that had enrolled in the Open Beta program. For the individual devices, the OnePlus 3 beta is now in its 19th version while the one for the OnePlus 3T is at version 10. The new update for both the devices is 1.5GB in size and it is advisable to use Wi-Fi for downloads this big.
The beta update comes with a lengthy changelog with a long list of features. Bluetooth has got a major boost as it gets a new feature, besides improved performance in general, which allows the phone to display the remaining battery charge of the connected Bluetooth devices. Calling has been optimised to work better on the two devices with improvements made to the Smart Callback feature and a ‘dazzling’ animation has been added to the incoming calls.
Another major change was brought to the OnePlus Launcher that is now at v2.1. Dynamic icons have been included to the launcher for the Calendar and Weather app, which Google already has in its OS since a while now. The grid on the homescreen can also be customised now and the setting would stay intact irrespective of any change in pixel density.
Improvements can also be seen in the app drawer where OnePlus has tried to make app discovery easier. The newly installed apps will now be tagged with a blue dot to identify them easily. Apart from this, the top bar in the app drawer will display the five most recent apps.
The full changelog of the update is below:
What’s new
All new OnePlus Launcher v2.1:
- Supports dynamic icons for Weather and Calendar
- Added ‘Home screen layout’ under launcher settings for grid and icon customizations
- Grid layout will be kept irrespective of display size changes
- Added search history records in app drawer, displaying the 5 most recent apps on the first row
- Newly installed apps will now be tagged with a blue dot for easier recognition
- You can access icon pack resources on the Play store directly under launcher settings
- User interface improvements during widget selection
- Launcher version information is now visible under launcher settings
Other additions:
- Added an option to display battery status of connected Bluetooth devices
- Added OnePlus widget (Not usable on Shelf)
- Email address recognition within the text message contents
- Size of clock widget is now adjustable
- Updated UI style for Clock
Optimizations:
- Smart Callback works even better now
- Incoming call animations are more dazzling than ever
- OnePlus font optimizations for select languages
- Compatibility optimizations for various Bluetooth devices
You can download the update for OnePlus 3 from here and for 3T here.
