Here’s what’s new in OnePlus’s Android 15 update

Android 15 is the flavor of the season, and OEMs are racing to announce and roll out their UX skin updates on the new platform. OnePlus has just announced Oxygen OS 15 based on Android 15 for OnePlus devices, and it packs in a fair few new features, complete with a generous helping of AI upgrades.

Oxygen OS 15: Performance upgrades

OnePlus is boasting of Parallel Processing for a smoother, better experience on Oxygen OS 15. Parallel Processing is said to provide comprehensive coverage of interruption animations that help provide a seamless transition between apps. Further, OnePlus is stressing on two animations: sliding lightly to exit an app will feature a smooth animation returning the app to its icon on the home screen, while a forceful slide will result in a parabolic exit animation.

Beyond the new animations, OnePlus says it has shrunk the system by nearly 20% by removing redundant features. However, this reduction will be available only to its upcoming flagship, which we presume is the OnePlus 13. It will likely launch with Oxygen OS 15 out of the box.

Oxygen OS 15: Design upgrades

Oxygen OS 15 also comes with a few design updates. There are new Shelf Cards with a half-tone color scheme and expanded card sizes, such as 1×2, 2×2, 2×4, and 4×4. Third-party apps like Zomato and Blinkit can now be added to Shelf.

OnePlus has added “shimmering” effects to interfaces for charging, app installations, and unlocking. For example, during Super VOOC charging, shimmering highlights the speed while the unlocking animation adds a ripple effect for perceived fluidity.

OnePlus also says that Oxygen OS 15 comes with some redesigned icons. And you’d be glad to know that the 1+ Easter egg in the calculator app is still here.

For people looking for more customization, OnePlus has a “depth” feature for setting lock screen wallpapers, and some new pre-packaged themes in the form of “Flex Themes.” And thanks to the new OnePlus OneTake feature, lock screens with a subject photo on the Always On Display can transition from an image cutout to the full photo when you unlock the device and enter the home screen.

The company has also refined the Gaussian blur effect in the Control and Notification Centers, now applying color mixing based on the background wallpaper. There is a new optional Split mode, which lets you swipe from the top left for the notification drawer and swipe from the top right for the Quick Settings.

OnePlus’s Fluid Cloud now supports more apps, like Spotify, Swiggy, and Zomato. OnePlus curiously calls it Live Alerts within the Settings app. This feature feels like an extension of iOS’s Dynamic Island, with Oxygen OS 15 converting the area around the front camera into a small capsule that can be expanded into a larger card.

Open Canvas comes to more devices

With Oxygen OS 15, OnePlus is bringing Open Canvas to its candy bar phones, expanding it beyond its foldables and tablets. Open Canvas facilitates multi-window multitasking without compromising on the size of the multi-window.

The catch here is that you can only run two apps on Open Canvas on small-screen devices (i.e., not a foldable or a tablet).

Oxygen OS 15 brings an in-built file-sharing solution for OnePlus users to share files with iPhone users. You need to download the O+ Connect app on iPhones for this to work, but no additional app is needed on Oxygen OS 15 devices.

AI features in the Gallery app

Oxygen OS 14 already comes with AI features like AI Eraser, AI Clear Face, and AI Best Face. With Oxygen OS 15, OnePlus is adding many more AI features to the OnePlus Gallery app, namely AI Unblur, AI Reflection Eraser, and AI Detail Boost.

AI Unblur helps restore blurry photos, AI Reflection Eraser helps remove glare when shooting through glass windows, and AI Detail Boost helps restore your cropped photos with more details. AI Detail Boost also makes an appearance on other pixelated images, prompting users to help restore the image quality.

Note that these three features are cloud-based and are not run on-device.

Beyond the OnePlus Gallery, OnePlus is also adding AI to the OnePlus Notes app. The OnePlus Notes app can automatically organize your notes, highlight important points, and even summarize notes. It can further expand or reduce content, convert a voice recording into a transcript, clean up filler words, and clean up the formatting. All of this is processed through the cloud.

Oxygen OS 15 also comes with Intelligent Search, an extension of on-device search. Users can search across apps like Settings, Files, and Notes using natural language processing. Intelligent Search interprets the query, looks up the answer in your files and apps, and presents an AI answer back to you. Note that Intelligent Search runs on a combination of on-device and cloud-based AI, so it’s not completely on-device.

The AI Toolbox feature in Oxygen OS now comes with AI Reply, handled through the cloud. You can access it through the sidebar. This feature understands your conversation on IM apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat and generates contextually relevant AI replies.

Oxygen OS 15: Google upgrades coming to OnePlus devices

Beyond OnePlus AI, Oxygen OS 15 also brings in several Google features to OnePlus devices.

For starters, Circle to Search is coming to OnePlus devices, starting with the OnePlus 12 on Oxygen OS 15. With Circle to Search, OnePlus users can quickly search for text and images that are visible on their screen. It sounds like a small feature, but it makes the act of looking up things on Google Search second nature on devices that support Circle to Search.

Oxygen OS 15 is also enabling Pass Scan within Google Wallet. Users will be able to quickly scan paper boarding passes and add them to Google Wallet. This feature works from both, the camera and your photo album. Pass Scan was rolled out in the US in August, but with this announcement, we presume a wider global rollout is underway.

The first open beta of Oxygen OS 15 will debut on the OnePlus 12 series starting October 30, 2024. OnePlus is not committing to a fixed timeline for the stable release. Based on historical trends, the open beta program can last anywhere between one and three months, more if there are many bugs that need squashing. The company also mentions that the timeline for open betas will vary depending on the country, and respective carriers will determine updates to carrier-exclusive models.

OnePlus also says that AI features will begin rolling out by the end of November. Some AI features will be restricted to certain models to “ensure optimal performance.”

What are your thoughts on Oxygen OS 15? Did you like the new features that OnePlus is bringing to its devices? Let us know in the comments below!