For years, OnePlus has been recognised as a brand that disrupted the smartphone market with its flagship-grade smartphones that offer "almost" all the latest and greatest hardware and software for half the price of a flagship smartphone from Samsung or Apple.
Now, we say "almost all the latest and greatest hardware" because, in spite of having the fastest processors, unusually high RAM, and above-average cameras, OnePlus has always seemed to overlook some of the finer details that make a flagship smartphone stand apart from the rest of the crowd.
OnePlus' cost cutting trade-offs
The company has been skipping stuff like wireless charging support and IP rated water and dust resistance, and it's quite understandable why. OnePlus wanted to keep prices in check.
However, one of the not-so-expensive trade-offs that OnePlus has always made is 'Always On Display' or AOD, despite its phones sporting AMOLED displays. OnePlus could finally change that with an upcoming software update.
OnePlus top 5 IDEAS
OnePlus recently introduced a new community co-creation platform called IDEAS on OnePlus forums where it asked the OnePlus Community to share innovative ideas which would help make OnePlus phones or OxygenOS better.
The company announced that the top 5 most liked ideas will be shared with OnePlus product heads and engineers and will be considered on the basis of their relevance and importance and would get classified into three statuses – Not Adopted, Under Consideration, and Adopted.
Always On Display, no longer a trade-off
Quite unsurprisingly, the top idea is AOD – with around 227 likes (at the time of writing) and counting.
OnePlus posted a tweet in which it shared the results and it's quite obvious that it is finally committed to delivering the AOD.
The company has said that the long-awaited feature is indeed on its update roadmap and that it will be arriving in a future software update.
Although the tweet didn't reveal the exact timeline of the update, it is likely that the AOD feature will come with the upcoming OnePlus 8 smartphone series, and a future update will add the feature to most older OnePlus devices.
The most sought after feature by OnePlus fans
AOD has been one of the most requested features by OnePlus fans and users ever since it was spotted on the very first review units of the OnePlus 6 from back in 2018.
The AOD functionality appeared in the review units of the OnePlus 6 that were running a pre-release version of OxygenOS. However, the feature was later removed when the phones began shipping to customers.
OnePlus maintained that the reason it had to do away with the ambient display feature was because it felt that it would drain the battery a little too much.
Does AOD really drain batteries?
We have long seen the AOD feature in a lot of Android smartphones that have an AMOLED display, and it has been proved that it actually doesn't use much battery because in an AMOLED display, only the pixels that are lit up consume power, while the blacked out pixels don't need any current.
Some manufacturers like Nokia, Xiaomi and Realme have now started providing the feature even in budget smartphones that have an LCD screen.
It is typically found to cost less than 5 per cent of battery juice per day, which isn't that bad of a sacrifice. This also explains why the OnePlus Community has been gunning for the future ever since the OnePlus 6T.
Users love the feature for the very fact that they don't need to unlock their phone every time they want to know the time, or if they want to know the status of their phone's battery.
Other top ideas
The other four most liked ideas are the 'OnePlus Dex (connectivity between OnePlus phones and a computer), 'Edge notification lights,' 'A perfect camera implementation for the Google Camera Port,' and 'Boosting the capabilities of the Alert Slider.'
While we don't know when these ideas will materialize, the company is rumoured to offer wireless charging on the OnePlus 8 Pro, which will be another first for the company.
