Android 13 is only now rolling out to the four-month-young OnePlus 10T beast
After impressively beating Samsung's latest "conventional" flagships to the stable Android 13 punch with an incredibly early update for the 10 Pro powerhouse all the way back in September, OnePlus took an inexplicably long break before spreading the love to last year's 9 and 9 Pro high-enders and then a whopping half a dozen more handsets from 2022, 2021, and even 2020.
That latter avalanche of over-the-air rollouts made it easy to overlook a shocking omission on the company's part... that's finally being rectified as we speak.
Yes, the OnePlus 10T is receiving its very own collection of (hopefully) stable Android 13-based OxygenOS 13 goodies at last, and in case the name doesn't make the phone's young age clear enough, we'd like to turn your attention to this formal announcement post from early August.
That's right, the 10T is even younger than the 10 Pro, having seen daylight mere days before Google delivered Android 13 updates to its eligible in-house Pixels, and yet the ancient OnePlus 8, 8 Pro, and 8T somehow got an earlier taste of this hot new OS version.
For what it's worth, adventurous OnePlus 10T owners were invited to an Open Beta program to test Android 13, well, out in the open around a month and a half ago, which means the handset's manufacturer spent quite a bit of time quashing bugs and "optimizing" this software revision before its final public deployment.
A smoother update always beats a faster update, but alas, a number of users are already complaining of various (smaller and larger) issues concerning battery drain, camera performance, and overall system stability making their way to their 10T units after the latest download.
This is pretty massive, mind you, tipping the scales at around 5GB... for non-beta testers and gradually spreading from country to country across Europe, Asia, North America, and other "global" territories with the following new features, add-ons, tweaks, and changes:
Aquamorphic Design
• Adds Aquamorphic Design theme colors for enhanced visual comfort;
• Applies the Aquamorphic Design philosophy to animations to make them natural and vivid;
• Adds Shadow-Reflective Clock, with shadow simulating the orientation of the sun and moon;
• Adds a Home screen world clock widget to show the time in different time zones;
• Upgrades to Quantum Animation Engine 4.0, with a new behavior recognition feature, which recognizes complex gestures and provides optimized interactions;
• Optimizes UI layers for a clearer and neater visual experience;
• Applies real-world physical motions to animations to make them look more natural and intuitive;
• Adapts responsive layouts to accommodate different screen sizes to improve readability;
• Optimizes the widget design to make information easier and quicker to find;
• Optimizes fonts for better readability;
• Optimizes system icons by using the latest color scheme to make the icons easier to recognize;
• Enriches and optimizes illustrations for features by incorporating multicultural and inclusive elements.
Efficiency
• Adds Meeting Assistant to enhance the meeting connecting and note-taking experience and introduces an option to make notifications more subtle and less distracting;
• Adds large folders to the Home screen. You can now open an app in an enlarged folder with just one tap and turn pages in the folder with a swipe;
• Adds a new type of Always-On Display that shows live information about music, ride-hailing, and food delivery (supports only some apps);
• Adds media playback control, and optimizes the Quick Settings experience;
• Adds more markup tools for screenshot editing;
• Adds support for adding widgets to the Home screen, making information display more personalized;
• Adds Sidebar Toolbox. You can open a floating window inside apps for smooth operation;
• Optimizes Shelf. Swiping down on the Home screen will bring up Shelf by default. You can search content online and on your device.
Seamless interconnection
• Optimizes Screencast, with cast content automatically adapting to the target screen;
• Optimizes earphone connectivity to deliver a more seamless experience.
Personalization
• Optimizes Bitmoji to offer more Always-On Display animations;
• Optimizes Insight Always-On Display, with more personalized Always-On Display settings available;
• Optimizes Portrait Silhouette Always-On Display, with more drawing tools and line colors available.
Security & privacy
• Adds an automatic pixelation feature for chat screenshots. The system can identify and automatically pixelate profile pictures and display names in a chat screenshot to protect your privacy;
• Optimizes Private Safe. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is used to encrypt all files for enhanced security of private files.
Health & Digital wellbeing
• Adds Eye comfort in Kid Space to protect children's vision.
Gaming experience
• Upgrades to HyperBoost GPA 4.0 to stabilize the frame rate and balance the performance and power consumption in key scenarios.
• Adds Aquamorphic Design theme colors for enhanced visual comfort;
• Applies the Aquamorphic Design philosophy to animations to make them natural and vivid;
• Adds Shadow-Reflective Clock, with shadow simulating the orientation of the sun and moon;
• Adds a Home screen world clock widget to show the time in different time zones;
• Upgrades to Quantum Animation Engine 4.0, with a new behavior recognition feature, which recognizes complex gestures and provides optimized interactions;
• Optimizes UI layers for a clearer and neater visual experience;
• Applies real-world physical motions to animations to make them look more natural and intuitive;
• Adapts responsive layouts to accommodate different screen sizes to improve readability;
• Optimizes the widget design to make information easier and quicker to find;
• Optimizes fonts for better readability;
• Optimizes system icons by using the latest color scheme to make the icons easier to recognize;
Efficiency
• Adds Meeting Assistant to enhance the meeting connecting and note-taking experience and introduces an option to make notifications more subtle and less distracting;
• Adds a new type of Always-On Display that shows live information about music, ride-hailing, and food delivery (supports only some apps);
• Adds media playback control, and optimizes the Quick Settings experience;
• Adds more markup tools for screenshot editing;
• Adds support for adding widgets to the Home screen, making information display more personalized;
• Adds Sidebar Toolbox. You can open a floating window inside apps for smooth operation;
• Optimizes Shelf. Swiping down on the Home screen will bring up Shelf by default. You can search content online and on your device.
Seamless interconnection
• Optimizes Screencast, with cast content automatically adapting to the target screen;
• Optimizes earphone connectivity to deliver a more seamless experience.
Personalization
• Optimizes Bitmoji to offer more Always-On Display animations;
• Optimizes Insight Always-On Display, with more personalized Always-On Display settings available;
• Optimizes Portrait Silhouette Always-On Display, with more drawing tools and line colors available.
Security & privacy
• Optimizes Private Safe. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is used to encrypt all files for enhanced security of private files.
Health & Digital wellbeing
• Adds Eye comfort in Kid Space to protect children's vision.
Gaming experience
• Upgrades to HyperBoost GPA 4.0 to stabilize the frame rate and balance the performance and power consumption in key scenarios.
Things that are NOT allowed: