Newsletter
OnePlus has started rolling out OxygenOS Open Beta 3 for the OnePlus 5T, and in the process, the company has added one really interesting iPhone X-like feature, navigation gestures. We’ll talk about that in a minute, along with other changes that this update brings, but first, it’s worth noting that this is the third Oreo-based OxygenOS Open Beta build for the OnePlus 5T, and chances are that the phone will get a stable build of Android 8.0 Oreo in the near future.
Having said that, once you update the phone to this beta build, you will be able to head over to settings, and disable the on-screen buttons, which will, at the same time, activate navigation gestures. So, how does this work? Well, swiping up from the bottom up activates both home and back actions, so if you swipe up from the bottom up while sticking to the middle of the phone’s bottom, you will activate the home gesture, and if you do the same on the left or right sides of the phone’s bottom, you will activate the back key action. If you’d like to activate multitasking, you will need to do the same thing you do for the ‘home’ action, but you’ll need to pause for a minute without raising your finger, similar as you’d do on the iPhone X. These navigation gestures may make it to the final Android 8.0 Oreo build on the OnePlus 5T, they probably will, actually, but it will be your choice whether you’d like to activate them or not, as on-screen navigation keys will still be there for you to use.
Now, in addition to adding navigation gestures, the company has also removed the ‘Clipboard’ function, while the ‘pick-up gesture switcher’ has been added, and it lets you choose which way you slide up (up or down) to pick up a phone call. A new security patch has been attached to this update as well, while Indian users will receive ‘SMS categorization’ function. On top of all that, general bug fixes and improvements have also been listed in OnePlus’ changelog. It is worth noting that Open Beta 5 is rolling out to the OnePlus 5, and it basically comes with all the same changes as does this update for the OnePlus 5T, though without navigation gestures.