The OnePlus 3 was probably the best phone made by OnePlus at the time of its release. It ticked all the boxes right and made up for everything that its previous iteration, the OnePlus 2 lacked. And with the success of the 3, OnePlus, for the first time launched a mid-cycle upgrade, the 3T. It’s been 2 years since these devices came out, and a lot of changes have taken place. Since the time the iPhone X dropped TouchID in favor of FaceID, a lot of OEMs have been using face unlock as a USP for their devices. OnePlus too, jumped onto the bandwagon with the 5T with blazing fast face unlocking capabilities. It was touted as the fastest face unlock feature compared to any other device. Seeing how well this feature was received by the consumers, the co-founder of OnePlus, Carl Pei promised to roll out this feature to OnePlus 3, 3T and 5 users as well.
Though the OnePlus 5 received the update soon after the announcement, the older siblings 3 and 3T have just received the official update in the form of Oxygen OS 5.0.3. The roll-out is incremental, meaning the update will reach users gradually phase-wise.
The update also brings new improvements to the stock Launcher, including a more refined shelf UI design, a new design for App shortcuts, and more pop-up options when you long press an app icon. The default Gallery app also sees a few changes like the new “Places” feature that shows you a map-view of photos based on the location they were taken at. There’s also a new “Recently Deleted” folder and a new option to share photos to the Shot-On-OnePlus album is also supported. File manager has added a new large files category for better discovery, and there’s a new weather widget for the Launcher. OnePlus has also improved positioning accuracy for weather, and the option to select the refresh interval for weather information update and adjust it to your preference.
If you have a OnePlus 3/3T, then head over to Settings>System Updates and check for updates. If you haven’t received the update yet, we suggest waiting for a while as it is a phased roll-out. If you’re too impatient to wait for the OTA update, you can head over to https://downloads.oneplus.com/ and download the specific ROM for your device and flash it using the instructions mentioned.