A year since it launched ColorOS 11, its own take on Android, Oppo is soon set to officially unveil ColorOS 12.
The launch is slated for October 11 and Oppo is counting down to the official unveiling of ColorOS 12 on its website.
Obviously, ColorOS 12 is based on Android 12, which just got released to AOSP the other day and is coming to devices from Google, Oppo and other Android partners in a few weeks.
As such, there’s a mix of upgrades in terms of features from the last version of ColorOS, ColorOS 11. There are new additions to the ColorOS stable by Oppo and there are additions that will be finding their way to hundreds of variations of Oppo smartphone models courtesy of the changes introduced by Google.
The most notable omission from the Google additions to Android 12 in ColorOS 12 is the biggest one: the Material You design. Oppo has opted to go with its own UI design, instead.
The changes introduced by Oppo include the following:
- Visually, there is what appears to be a fresh coat of paint. There are redesigned icons (squircle-shaped) and there are new animations that, according to Oppo, imitate “physical habits of resistance, inertia, and rebound” to make the overall experience “more realistic, smoother, and more intuitive” thanks to the company’s Quantum Animation Engine. Some more “white” spaces will also not go unnoticed in ColorOS 12 as Oppo looks to declutter its Android overlay and makes the most of the coming together of it and OnePlus’ software teams which sees the latter’s overlay, OxygenOS, borrow heavily from ColorOS. There is also ‘Omoji’, a new avatar emoji that can be created by the software using advanced face capture algorithms native to ColorOS 12.
- Function-wise, a new FlexDrop feature builds on Oppo’s efforts to smoothen multitasking on its devices by allowing users to drag apps with simple gestures and switch between full-screen view, small window and mini window modes. There is also a Smart Sidebar, an improvement of what we have in ColorOS 11, that features six new tools to help users do a variety of things from quickly playing songs on the web to comparing prices of products as they shop on the web. A new Cross-Screen Interconnection feature addresses the need for users to have a simple connection between their phones and their (Windows-based) computers, sharing files stored on one device with the other, kind of like the way Lenovo, Huawei and Samsung have been doing for a while now with their devices.
- There is a new “anti-stutter engine” built into ColorOS 12 to take care of any lag and stuttering and preserve the integrity of the hardware-software interactions up to a year and a half after one has starting using their device on the updated software.
Other ColorOS 12 features like Car Screen Projection are irrelevant to Kenyan users who will have to make do with Android Auto which Oppo smartphones support so well.
ColorOS 12 users can also expect to benefit from the wide range of privacy-focused improvements coming to Android with Android 12 that build upon what Google has been doing over the last few years. One of the most notable changes that users will encounter is the transparency with which apps accessing the microphone and the front-facing camera will be treated. Oppo is building on this by adding its own touch – users won’t have any identifiable information going out with any images taken with their devices that they opt to share with the world. The software will automatically strip any metadata.
Taking Samsung’s lead, Oppo is also promising at least 3 major Android system upgrades over the life of a device. There is a catch, though. That only applies to its flagship Find X series. The Reno series will get 2 major Android upgrades while the entry-level A series is only guaranteed a single major Android upgrade over its lifetime.
The company expects to upgrade over 100 different device models to the ColorOS 12 experience, impacting over 150 million users of Oppo devices worldwide.
While users of Oppo smartphones in Kenya will have to wait for at least a few more weeks (maybe months) before the ColorOS 12 is available, a few users of the Oppo Find X3 Pro, which isn’t available in Kenya, can take ColorOS 12 beta for a spin on their devices. The Find X3 Pro is one of the smartphones that were enrolled in the Android 12 beta program.
