ColorOS 7 review: Slick, smooth and everything among!

Rating:     4.3

Late in November, OPPO officially unveiled ColorOS 7 at an event in India and today, the company is rolling out a trial version for ten of its devices which also contains a few of its recent flagships.

With ColorOS 7, OPPO has done the unthinkable and strayed away from its ethos and along the way introduced an update that brings a lot more to the table. This can be the brand’s biggest ever update and it has a lightweight design and an intuitive interface that helps in elevating the complete user experience. With it being predicated on Android 10, you get some of the highly-anticipated features such as system-wide dark mode, focus mode along with improved privacy and location controls.

Design

ColorOS 7 is based on Android 10 and it posseses an overhaul in an individual interface by introducing a fresh colour palette over the board alongside new fonts. The design here isn’t just how well the software is optimised, but instead, it really is designed to reduce visual fatigue.

This undoubtedly OPPO’s biggest upgrade in years and there are improvements and enhancements which range from wallpapers to the notification shade and from the new font to a bunch of new icons.

In addition to the above-mentioned updates, OPPO has added new animations as well and an example of this could be seen while the handset has been charged. The in-built camera app in addition has been given the makeover with it now being even more intuitive than before which should favour those keen on capturing low-light shots.

With ColorOS 7, the icons can also be customised and this is a neat feature added since it enables you to match it together with your wallpaper or theme used. This is a fresh feature for the OS and prevalent to an extent on other OEM softwares; however, OPPO offers it in a when hardly any can claim to. In this version, you get three sets of exclusively designed icon styles to pick from - Rectangle, Pebble and Material styles. Also, there exists a redesigned third-party iphone app icon option where ColorOS 7 uses its Art+ icon design where in fact the top 200 applications from the App Market can be redesigned to conform to the style of the program.

The ColorOS 7 is where Dark Mode is finally done right and this is evident on some of OPPO’s flagship handsets with AMOLED displays. The Dark Mode may also be scheduled for a particular time which is something that’s not really a part of Android 10. Additionally, the compatibility with third-party applications is among the standout features here which integration is far superior to what Google offers.

Another noteworthy point here's that OPPO’s Smart Sidebar occupies less space as there is merely an individual row of shortcuts instead of two. This enables for easy manoeuvring during single-handed operation.

ColorOS 7 reviewColorOS 7 review

Aside from this, you get an improved Off-screen clock, new animations, Game Assistant,  faster wireless transfers, improved gesture navigation, more wallpapers, better haptics, refined sounds therefore much more.

Lastly, one of the overlooked features here is how few bugs are actually within this build. And this is one thing which should not be studied for granted.