OnePlus 11 long-term review

OxygenOS 13.1

OxygenOS these days is ColorOS with a different name, and a lot of people are put off by that on the Internet it seems. We get their concerns regarding there essentially now being one less Android skin option out there, since we've lost the 'true' OxygenOS to a repackaged, rebranded version of Oppo's ColorOS. More competition is always better, but with OnePlus being absorbed into Oppo you have to understand that this decision made perfect business sense - why would one company have two different software skins to develop and maintain? Exactly.

Now, leaving aside the decreased level of competition and options in terms of Android skins, here's the thing - this OxygenOS is actually great. It's almost bug-free, it's always fast, and, working together with the hardware on offer here, it delivers one of the smoothest experiences ever. That might not be what fans of the old OxygenOS want to hear, but it's definitely important to mention.

In the looks department, OxygenOS 13.1 is sort of an in-betweener. It's not as stock-like as previous iterations used to be, but it's not as far from stock as something like MIUI either. It's just somewhere in the middle, with its own aesthetic, though it seems to be slightly inspired by the stock looks at least. Slightly.

This isn't a look that's ever wowed us, but it's functional, and you can easily get things done. There's a good degree of customization baked in too, without going so overboard that most people would get confused. And, for the most part, the defaults for all of the customizable options are sensibly set.

OxygenOS 13.1

The only thing we didn't get was why Wi-Fi never wanted to stay off. We turned it off manually a few times, but it always turned itself back on again within a few minutes. Every. Single. Time.

This might be connected to the Wi-Fi scanning setting, which is related to positioning, but while we've always had that on for every phone we've reviewed long-term, how it works is the Wi-Fi is shown as off since it's not trying to connect to any networks - it will just use the surrounding networks to aid in locating you. And this isn't connected to any specific location where we've used Wi-Fi before either, since we only turned it off specifically when we were away from such places and in areas where we knew we wouldn't use Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi settings

We don't think this has a big impact on battery life, at least it didn't feel like that to us, but we just find it to be pretty weird behavior. And it is, in fact, the only thing you can even remotely label a bug that we've encountered throughout our time with the OnePlus 11.

This next one isn't a bug, but it drove us crazy nevertheless. For some reason, in the most recent iterations of ColorOS (and, thus, OxygenOS too), the settings for Do Not Disturb mode have changed in a way that makes no sense to us, as there is no way to have DND mode silence notifications while at the same time allowing all calls to come through. None. You can only have calls from contacts or favorites come through, but not all calls.

Do Not Disturb settings

This isn't how it used to be, and we don't know why anyone thought it would be a good idea to remove an option like this. Before you ask - adding the phone app, and even "phone calls'' to the list of apps that are allowed to notify you does absolutely nothing. This is the part that might be a bug, but we're not sure, and even if it is, that's a very roundabout way of going about it when there should just have been an "everyone" option in the Exceptions menu for calls.

Updates

OnePlus has a good recent track record when it comes to big Android updates, and the brand has already promised that it will release Android 14-based OxygenOS 14 on September 25. That would be an incredibly fast turnaround, but it's unclear if the promise will actually be kept, since Google is now rumored to have delayed the release until October. Regardless, the good intentions were there on OnePlus' part, and a beta program is currently ongoing.

With all this said, we have no reason to believe that owners of the OnePlus 11 will have a lot of waiting to do in order to receive their taste of the next version of Android. Furthermore, the brand now promises four major Android updates and five years of security updates delivered every two months. That's almost as good as the best such update promises out there, the only thing that could be improved is the cadence of those security patches, which are meant to be monthly.

Current software version at the time of writing

So while OnePlus isn't winning any awards for its update policy, it sure isn't bad at this either, almost keeping up with the best out there. From this point of view, it's definitely one of the good ones, so we think you're unlikely to feel disappointed at what it will offer, in terms of software support, to the OnePlus 11 going forward.

Launcher, Recents, gesture navigation

The OxygenOS launcher on the OnePlus 11 is pretty standard fare, offering everything most people would want from a launcher and possibly a bit more on top of that. It supports an app drawer, of course, as well as having Google's Discover feed to the left of your leftmost homescreen if you want it there.

There is thankfully a setting to switch what swiping down across the home screen does, and you can have your pick between OnePlus' Shelf, the Global Search, or what we assume most people would want there (at least we know we do), which is pulling down the notification panel.

Launcher and its settings

The Recent apps display is in a horizontally-scrolling list, as most are these days (unless we're talking lone holdout MIUI), and there's a handy trick here that both ColorOS and OxygenOS employ to make your life much easier. Under the app screenshots, there's a corresponding row of app icons, and if you scroll horizontally on top of these icons, the scrolling is much faster than what you get when you go over the snapshots themselves.

This saves a lot of time when you want to find an app that you've used recently but it isn't among the last five. The feature is incredibly well implemented too: the scrolling, while fast, never feels unnatural, and you always feel in control of the motion. Very nicely done, and we wanted to point this out since it's a very small feature but one that other skins nevertheless don't have.

That said, the default behavior is for Recents to open up, showing you the app you were just in, and we recognize this is found in other skins as well, but we still don't see the point. If you're going to Recent apps you were going to switch to another one, weren't you? Isn't that the whole point? So then, why would the feature ever so slightly hinder you in this manner? Perhaps, as MIUI does, it could show the previous app by default, so if that's the one you were looking for, you can switch to it in an instant.

Recent apps

This would have been more problematic than it is, had OxygenOS not retained two ways to quickly switch apps. First, you can swipe from the side as if to go back and then hold, and this will take you straight to the previous app. Second, you can swipe across the bottom of the screen even if you've disabled the white pill bar, and this can cycle through multiple recent apps. So there is a ton of flexibility on offer here for sure, which we are thankful for.

We already addressed the Back gesture, and yes, obviously, gesture navigation is present on the OnePlus 11, and it works flawlessly, as you'd expect from a feature that's been around for this long at this point in time. As we mentioned in the previous paragraph, the white pill bar abomination can be removed while its functionality is retained, which is how it should work for every third-party skin (hear that, MIUI 14?).

Gesture navigation settings

And since we changed the sensitivity setting for the screen edges (discussed in the Design section), we got absolutely no false triggers for the gestures either, so overall, we'd call this a very competent implementation indeed.

Dark mode, Wallpapers & style

ColorOS' dark theme, which OxygenOS borrows here, is by far the most customizable out there, with not one, not two, but three different, selectable levels of darkness. That's two more than all of the others out there, and it's great to have this flexibility. We always go for Enhanced, which is the darkest of the bunch, but maybe you like your darks lighter? In that case, your taste is covered here.

If you use the phone in low-light environments a lot, we recommend you leave (or turn) on the Adjust wallpapers to Dark mode setting, as well as Adjust icons to Dark mode and Reduce contrast in low-light conditions. These will help minimize unnecessary eye strain.

Dark mode settings

Dark mode for third-party apps, however, is a joke of a setting that's probably been left in by accident, we assume since it only says it's able to work with a grand total of three apps. We have hundreds installed, and we know for certain that at least 10 others have no dark mode of their own and would very much benefit from this feature, but alas, they can't. Also, funnily enough, Speedtest is shown here, but its default theme has been dark for ages (so long, in fact, that we don't even remember a time when it wasn't).

If you want even more customization applied to the looks of OxygenOS on the OnePlus 11, then the Wallpapers & style section in Settings is where you should head to, even though we think it's misnamed somewhat, and we miss the old Customizations section. This is where you can find settings for the Always-on Display, which we've already covered in the Display section of this review, but it's much more than that. It's basically a central hub where every cosmetic adjustment you can make is presented to you.

So, naturally, you can pick a new wallpaper, as well as choose a color palette for your theme based on its colors. You get plenty of pre-defined options here, as well as the ability to customize every color used, which is probably overkill for most people - we sort of miss Google's way of handling this, which is fully automatic. You pick a new wallpaper, and immediately, the theme's colors change accordingly. Perhaps an on/off switch for this would have been enough, OnePlus.

Wallpapers & style

Anyway, once you're done messing with wallpapers and the theme colors extracted from them, you can adjust the shape of the Quick Settings icons, the shape and size of the home screen icons, and whether to show app names under these or not. Then you can move on to picking from seven different fingerprint unlocking animation styles, three edge lighting styles for notifications, and fonts.

Is this too much for most 'normal' users? Maybe, but 'power users' (is that even a phrase people use anymore?) will definitely appreciate at least some of these, and the great thing about this entire menu is that no one's forcing you to go into it and do anything. You could simply live on the defaults with no issues. So while there definitely are a ton of options here, we don't feel like they're overbearing in any way - if you enjoy sifting through things like these, you'll love them, but if you don't, you won't hate them since you can just ignore them.