Just like Samsung’s TouchWiz and Xiaomi’s MIUI software, OPPO’s ColorOS began life sporting some garish colors, bloatware, and every feature you could want, and many that you didn’t, crammed into it. Today has brought us the official announcement of its latest iteration, the Android 12-based ColorOS 12, which OPPO promises is lean and mean with a modern interface that is aimed at the global audience while still including the features you know and love.
Instead of seeing multiple redundant apps pre-installed covering, ColorOS 12 taps into the Google ecosystem for many of its functions, with Google’s Messages and Phone apps used instead of OPPO’s variants. Besides cutting way down on bloatware, it means that OPPO’s developers can focus on ColorOS 12 instead of fiddling with apps that many users didn’t use in the first place. You’ll find Google Assistant and Lens integration, and perhaps more importantly, Google Discover is just a swipe to the left-most screen away, with OPPO’s smart feed having been kicked to the curb on the global version of ColorOS 12.
OPPO has also leveraged Google’s Accessibility features in ColorOS 12, with Magnification and TalkBack baked in alongside High Contrast Colors, and Color Vision Enhancement that lets the user adjust the colors on the screen to suit their color visibility.
Based on the latest version of the Android OS, ColorOS 12 brings a more inclusive design with new ways of customizing your smartphone experience while offering all the latest privacy and security features found in Android 12. You’ll find the fancy new Android 12 Privacy Dashboard along with Approximate Location Sharing, Microphone and Camera indicators present, giving users more control over the data they share with others.
With more than 400 million users worldwide, OPPO knows that making even a small change to the UI can have a dramatic effect on the user experience. As such, ColorOS 12 is said to feature subtle changes that present a cleaner UI, with increased spacing between design elements. You’ll find that OPPO has refrained from trying to overfill the information boxes in the Settings app, with more space between entries and enhanced clarity.
Having so many global users means that there are a multitude of languages to support, and OPPO says that ColorOS 12 now supports 67 languages as standard with localized fonts.
One of the best features of Android over the years has been the vast scope that users had to customize their setups, and ColorOS 12 takes this a step further by letting the UI choose colors based on the wallpaper on your home screen. It only applies to static wallpapers and lets you pick the main color from the image to use system-wide. Always-On-Mode gets a couple of new features including the Canvas AOD that we’ve seen previously on OxygenOS that lets you pick an image of a person or a cat, in my case,
Next up we have the Omoji app that lets you create your own 3D ‘Omoji’ avatar using the selfie camera to capture your head movement, after which you can choose from over 200 accessories and features to personalize the end result in static or video format. You can even use your Omoji with the Always-on-Display Mode. OPPO says that the Omoji feature will be added to the ColorOS 12.1 update that is scheduled for early 2022.
Also scheduled for the ColorOS 12.1 update is the new PC Connect feature. You’ll find it easier to transfer files to and from your Windows computer thanks to OPPO’s PC Connect mode that shows your phone notifications on the PC as well as letting you transfer files to and from the PC.
As you might expect, the first phone to be updated to ColorOS 12 is OPPO’s 2021 flagship, the Find X3 Pro, which is eligible to receive the first ColorOS 12 beta from today onwards. As for other OPPO smartphones, we’ve embedded the planned timeline on the ColorOS 12 beta program above.
