OxygenOS 16 Comes With Major Upgrades To OnePlus Phones

OnePlus phones get more than just a fresh Android base in OxygenOS 16; they gain a thorough tune‑up that streamlines design, upgrades customization, and overlays smart cross‑device stunts and utilitarian AI.

Much of that’s down to the greeting celebration at MWC 2022 last week, where 16th‑century Spanish square stands were packed with columned temples to mobiles and tablets laden with every spoofy alternative to reading itself. Those aren’t exactly its fire‑breathing gadgets, but more reflections on things you’d notice about your phone as an owner rather than it has a dragon turbo or whatever — so cuddle up close to change, if not reshaping exactly what smartphones are for.

Where the latter saw changes as subtle, Android 16 will find OnePlus’s overlay anything but. From revamped Quick Settings to more immersive lock screen wallpaper and system‑wide Live Captions, OxygenOS 16 aligns the OS with how people use phones now — and how they interact across laptops, tablets, and wearables.

New Look and More Control in OxygenOS 16’s Interface

OxygenOS 16 introduces more of an “airy” visual system using heavier Gaussian blur and Liquid Glass‑like panels, but maintaining the clean design that enthusiasts love. The Quick Settings panel is now modular, with a larger 2×1 tray up top and a 1×1 grid available in the bottom alongside your link toggles. You can delete or move preset media and brightness sliders, and you can even set the panel to a multi‑color scheme for quicker visual scanning.

System‑wide style icons come to everyone, even if you haven’t adopted Android throughout. Also new is the Flux icon pack by OnePlus, which automatically themes apps in the home screen; app drawer; Recents; and Settings. While forced themes can slightly differ in luminance from native icons, the general grid design feels more coherent than mixed palettes.

On the launcher, you can resize app and folder icons by dragging a corner handle; choose tighter grids (up to 5×7); and employ an updated app drawer, which comes with a bottom search bar and auto‑generated categories.

Shelf widgets also receive flexible relative placement and dimensioning — good news for those with taller devices.

Flux Themes 2.0 and a More Intelligent Lock Screen

Flux Themes 2.0 really layers on the lock screen in a new fashion. Clocks and word art can subtly “sit behind” your wallpaper subject with individually adjustable positioning per theme. Text effects are also editable, no longer trapped as presets, which lets you create a signature look.

Set motion photos or videos as wallpapers and slot into the mini‑widgets for at‑a‑glance information. It’s a functional step toward the lock‑screen widgets that are so hot right now, minus all the junk.

Live Alerts Meet and Integrate With Android’s Live Updates

Live Alerts — OnePlus’s version of live card content around the punch‑hole — can feed off Android’s Live Updates API now. So that’s third‑party apps capable of Live Updates allowing them to serve up persistent, glanceable information through Live Alerts, not just OnePlus apps. You’ll probably have to toggle “Show Live Updates on Live Alerts” per app in Settings, while media playback is auto‑promoted to a Live Alert by default.

Behind the scenes, Parallel Processing 2.0 takes OnePlus’s animation tech to the app drawer, Shelf, and three‑button navigation. Content opening and closing from your touch point through the new Flow Motion framework can help reduce the “stutter” that often occurs as you rapidly switch tasks. It’s probably an esoteric fixation on benchmarks, but the upshot is a phone that just feels faster.

Cross‑Device Hub Features and Unexpected Apple Watch Hooks

A new Cross‑Device Connectivity menu consolidates casting, clipboard sync, hotspot sharing, notifications, and file transfer between OnePlus phones and tablets, Windows, macOS, TVs, and Android Auto. With O+ Connect, many of these powers arrive on PC and Mac — fitting with the multi‑device workflows emphasized in Google’s own platform recommendations for large screens.

Surprisingly, OnePlus throws in some Apple Watch integrations: remote camera control, phone‑finding, and health data syncing via OHealth Connect. It’s not quite the level of Apple’s in‑ecosystem handoffs, but it reduces the friction for mixed‑device households — which remain the reality, per consumer‑usage studies by firms like IDC and Counterpoint Research.

Mind Space Improvements and Applied AI Across Apps

Mind Space, which keeps notes, screenshots, links, and clips safe in a vault, now interfaces with Google’s Gemini to ask questions based on content saved — trip plans, research materials, receipts — and receive context‑aware results.

It automatically sorts stuff into collections, has 60‑second voice memos, and lets you add what’s been captured directly from the screenshot preview.

AI Writer can create mind maps, charts, and captions. The camera’s document mode is for scanning slides and papers with perspective correction, along with features like Straighten, Mono, Unblur, and AI Enhance. The Recorder app offers real‑time transcription, AI summaries, noise suppression, and shareable links. For photos, AI Portrait Glow increases subject lighting; in the “AI PlayLab,” Party Up animates stills and YumSee mock‑ups of menu items from text.

Many artificial intelligence features are housed in OnePlus’s Private Computing Cloud, which the company claims is secured by the device’s Trusted Execution Environment. Like all cloud‑assisted AI, it’s a trade‑off: the power is in connection and trust; power users can turn off what they don’t want.

Tablet Perks and New Tricks on the OnePlus Pad Series

This tablet build adds a bit more to the icons allowed on the home screen, and an 18‑icon dock is also available. Open Canvas currently multitasks — or to juggle — five apps (three in split view and a pair floating) at once, which fits Google’s large‑screen best practices for Roku. The Photos app gains more powerful video tools and conversion of Live Photos, and the Windows version adds polished touches such as using the tablet as a virtual trackpad and drag‑and‑drop file moves.

Core Android 16 Inclusions and Notable Exclusions

Platform‑level enhancements land here too. Predictive back navigation lets you see where a back gesture would take you before taking the action. Security facets like Advanced Protection and Identity Check will bring more focused hardening and richer theft defense in alignment with organizational guidelines from NIST, which recommend different layers of authentication and reinforcement approaches for devices.

Here’s what won’t be included: Desktop Mode and the Linux Terminal app are MIA in this build. If you were pining to use your phone as a slimmed‑down PC, then you may need other options for now.

Bottom Line: Why OxygenOS 16 Feels Like a Big Upgrade

OxygenOS 16 looks like a maturity release: faster movement, deeper personalization, more capable instruments, and fewer silos between your devices. Coupled with the company’s multi‑year update policy on recent flagships, the upgrade should feel significant whether you’re concerned about looks, your workflow, or both. The biggest wins aren’t flashy. They are small decisions that add up and quietly make the phone better every time you unlock it.