Over the years, no Android skin other than OPPO’s ColorOS has gotten more feature-rich while aligning itself close to the vanilla roots. As seen with the ColorOS 11 update, OPPO took a major leap from its precursor and bridged the gap between custom and stock to a great extent. With the launch of the new ColorOS 12, OPPO has doubled its efforts to ensure a more accessible and customized user experience than ever before.
As I experience this new software update, I must tell you that I am quite impressed. In this article, you will know all the reasons why ColorOS 12 has become one of my favorite Android OS, not just in style but in substance too.
Best ColorOS 12 Features
The custom Android Skins are known for giving users the choice to customize and interact in a more personalised manner with their device. This rings very much true on the ColorOS 12. Here’s how:
Comfortable and Pleasing UI
OPPO smartphones come in a myriad of sizes and ColorOS 12 is quite adaptive to these varied screen surfaces. The UX designers over at OPPO have made the interface very neat and polished. There is more white space to better organize lists, menus, and options which also looks and reads better. Texts are more legible and also intelligible, thanks to multi-lingual context-based translations. It supports more than 13 Indian languages like Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi to name a few. Icons are more 3D and appealing with a light shadow effect that looks quite premium. The key UI elements are also closer to your finger’s reach.
Overall, ColorOS 12 design update is more comfortable to use and quite inclusive. The company is also opening up key tools like Color Vision Enhancement for third parties so that they can incorporate them to develop more capable and flexible UI elements. Now the UI conveniences don’t end here. You could say that the following two features are an extension of this.
Enhanced Multitasking
OPPO phones have had this Smart Sidebar utility for a long time now. But now with ColorOS 12, the feature is more useful. There is a Screen Translate tool that employs Google Lens and Translate to copy, translate and/or share plain texts as well as texts on images into the language of your preference. This would come in handy when you are out and about, especially while travelling or when you’re consuming content in a foreign language on your mobile phone. ColorOS 12 thus makes communication more accessible. Among the many other quick actions possible from the Sidebar, there is a cool Background Stream option that, on compatible apps, lets you play videos in the back, effectively as audio.
These are reasons why one picks a custom Android skin over the stock implementation and is a strong push for me as well.
Better Phone Management
As part of its UI overhaul, ColorOS 12 has reorganized several settings options for better performance and system optimization. The all-new Phone Manager is a prime example of this.
Basically, when you open the Phone Manager on ColorOS 12, you get two tabs: Home and Tools. Home is a collection of the most important cleanup and security checks for storage, virus, unnecessary apps, and privacy issues. You can scan, clean, and optimize the phone’s performance. If you want to dig even deeper, there are Tools, which arrange quick functions like App Management, Privacy Protection, Device, and Data Management, Personal and Property Safety, and Device Security Features.
If you are already accustomed to ColorOS, then these things must be familiar, but just better organized. However, even if you are new to this scene, it will be easier for you to learn and work your way around with the ColorOS 12.
Wallpaper based Theming System
On top of all this customization, or should I say, at the heart of it all lies Android 12’s Material You theming system. This is a clever feature whereby you get to paint the settings and other UI elements with color from wallpaper of your choice. Looks fab each time I do that.
Well, there are other Android 12 features too in the mix such as:
- Open chats in Bubbles, or Widgets for quicker conversations.
- More discernible and easy to respond notification drawer design.
- Nearby Share for fast file sharing.
But another Android 12 feature that deserves a dedicated spot is —
More Private and Secure
For starters, there is the headlining Privacy Dashboard feature that is your one-stop center to manage all permission requests from all apps and services on your device. But with detail like location which is crucial for some apps’ functioning, now you can spoof the same with an aptly named Approximate Location Sharing feature. There are also much-needed indicators for camera and mic usage. Not only that, but you can also easily block them if you feel they are unsolicited.
Making things even more secure are several ColorOS 12 measures like Quarterly Security Patch Updates, Anti-peeping for Notifications which show your confidential information only when the phone detects you as the user. There are also built-in encryption protocols at play here. And data stays in local servers only.
So, ColorOS 12 ensures your phone data stays private and you feel safe and secure. This is highly important in this day and age of cyber security exploits. For me the privacy features play a very important role as this level of safety is what sets user experience apart from other OS out there.
Efficient Performance
ColorOS 12 is not just faster and powerful than ever, it is one of the most robust mobile software out there.
Two features make this possible:
- Quantum Animation Engine 3.0, which is what managing all the nuanced and novel design elements introduced with ColorOS 12.
- AI System Booster, which is a combination of Artificial Intelligence-driven techniques like UI First, Super Touch, System Guard, and Idle Time Optimizer. Just so you know, what these bring forth is not only an all-around performance gain, partly thanks to 30% lower memory usage, but also 20% reduced background power consumption and about 12% increased battery endurance.
Now if you want to improve the battery life even more, then you can utilize the One-tap power-saving toggle. It will highlight the battery-sucking apps and all you gotta do is tap a button, and voila they are flushed out. To take out more juice, you can always turn off a multitude of settings like Always on Display, a high refresh rate screen, etc.
Attractive, Accessible, Ambitious, and Android 12
Rating:
Well, who doesn’t want a long-lasting and agile phone experience, eh?
Like wine, with each new update, ColorOS gets more savory, smooth, and secure. The new update as you’ve seen is not just a fresh coat of paint but offers a fine balance between custom features, accessibility, and ease of use.
It harbors the efforts of both Android 12 and ColorOS coders. Both are working hand-in-hand to tweak and tune up the software, particularly in the field of interconnectivity. Moreover, it also marks one of the broadest and fastest rollouts to around 110 mobile handsets and 150 million users across the globe. If that sounds amazing, what’s even more impressive is the massive commitment of 3 major Android version upgrades and 4 years of security patches maintenance (pushed on a quarterly basis) for the flagship phones. With ColorOS 12, your OPPO phone would not just be long-lasting but would also become more agile. Anyways, now you have all the reasons why ColorOS 12 is my favorite custom Android skin. And it could be yours too. So, what are you waiting for? If it is ColorOS 12, then note that it will be available for Find X2 and Reno 6 series phones by November 2021. Other series devices can expect the rollout by December 2021
Very nice