Most Canadians have never heard of the OnePlus One, and the ones that have likely don’t have it.
The Chinese OEM went through some growing pains on the way to bringing its device to market, but now that it’s here we’re confident there are a lot of good ideas behind it.
OnePlus was born of former Oppo executives, and the two companies share manufacturing facilities and, in the case of the One, design ideas. The OnePlus One is a direct descendent of Oppo’s Find 7A, but offers a slightly more refined chassis and far-improved software.
Speaking of software, the OnePlus One runs a variant of CyanogenMOD, the once-obscure custom ROM creator recently turned legitimate. While Oppo was the company’s first official partner, the OnePlus One is the first shipping product with CM 11 preinstalled.
Today marks the rollout of the company’s latest OTA update for the OPO, bringing it to Android 4.4.4 and updating many of Google’s main apps to their latest version.
The full changelog is below:
- Upgraded to Android 4.4.4
- Updated to new versions of Google apps
- Added Clear Image
- Added new (colder) calibration for the screen
- Proximity sensor prevents activation of off-screen gestures while in your pocket
- Capacitive touch keys supported in the recovery mode
- Increased capacitive button illumination
- Improved overall stability
- Fixed issues with vibration being disabled during Quiet Hours
- Fixed lockscreen not updating the track information during music playback
- Fixed microphone volume for all formats in the Voice Recorder app
- Fixed “OK, Google” not triggering voice search in Google Now
- Fixed Viber calls not working
- Fixed battery percent not updating in custom lock screens
- Fixed PicasaSync
- Fixed Camera “O” gesture activating lockscreen instead of triggering camera
- Fixed wallpapers not applying in full screen, taking the wrong size when cropping, etc
There are three major improvements to note. The screen calibration has been changed to make colours appear slightly cooler; shipping versions of the device were accused of having a slightly warm, almost yellowish, tint.
The screen is also less likely to turn on accidentally in your pocket if ‘double-tap to initialize’ is enabled, preventing pocket dials and other nastiness.
Finally, a new mode, Clear Image, has been added to the camera app, allowing the combination of up to 10 photos into a single image to increase sharpness and overall quality. The same feature has been available on the Find 7/A since launch, and while it’s a neat addition, the results rarely end up notably superior to the original image.
Other undocumented improvements include louder headpiece and speaker volume during calls, an LTE icon instead of “4G” when connected to a high-speed network, and translucency in the camera settings.
Users may have to wait a few days for the 113MB update to roll out, but Android Police has the OTA file if you want to push it manually.
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