Manoj Kumar – Senior Principal Engineer, OPPO Coloros

Coloros is a highly customized, efficient, intelligent, and richly designed Android-based mobile OS from OPPO. With over 350 million global users, Coloros supports more than 80 languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Bahasa. The recently launched Coloros 7.2 offers new features that make the use of the smartphone easier, richer and fun. It is built on Android 10, the latest version of Google’s operating system and comes with the most used Google apps pre-installed, including call and messages. Coloros7.2 brings an artistic visual experience with more than 30 sets of new artistic wallpapers that have been crafted by designers as part of the “Artist Wallpaper Project“. To know more about the Coloros, our correspondent Vivek Singh Chauhan spoke to Manoj Kumar, Senior Principal Engineer, OPPO Coloros. Here’s the edited excerpt.

Could you tell us what’s new in Coloros7.2? Coloros 7.2 offers new features that make the use of smartphones easier, richer and fun. The latest update features trademark lightweight design approach of Coloros 7, offering users more control over the UI and making the overall user experience more intuitive and effortless. It is built on Android 10, the latest version of Google’s operating system, and was debuted recently on the OPPO Reno 4 Pro.

Coloros 7.2’s AI APP Preloading allows you to open your most-used apps faster by predicting when you are going to launch which app, thus saving the user time and improving the smartphone efficiency greatly. Like you won’t have to wait for Uber to load when rushing to the office in the morning, or wait for Youtube to launch during the lunch break. With apps being smartly preloaded in the background, the app launch speeds improve by up to 23.6 per cent.

With Coloros 7.2, OPPO has taken power saving to the next level. The Super Power saver mode ensures you get the maximum possible battery life. With Super Power enabled, the smartphone backlight is optimized, and it limits your usage to six apps to enhance battery life. The feature also optimizes the CPU to function in a power-saving mode to deliver maximum possible battery life. With the Super Power saver, a 5 per cent battery life can deliver up to 1.5 hours of chat messenger apps such as Whatsapp or 77 minutes of making calls.

Coloros 7.2 also features an allnew and innovative product release and experimental platform, OPPO Lab. It is a dedicated section on Coloros 7.2 and will house experimental and new features for users to experience firsthand and also co-create by providing feedback.

With multi-tasking the norm of the day in times like these, enhanced accessibility on a smartphone is on the top wish list of all users. Coloros 7.2’s Icon Pull-down Gesture is one of the industry’s best solutions for opening those hard-to-reach apps on the Home screen when using the

phone with one hand.

The OPPO R&D team in Hyderabad has worked on extensive consumer insights to make the smartphone experience more customized and personalized as per the user’s sensibilities. With new and improved features for an enriched visual experience, enhanced accessibility and increased reliability, Coloros 7.2 ensure an experience upgrade on the Reno4 Pro.

How long is the process of designing a new version of Coloros? To process a new version, it takes a minimum time frame of 4 to 6 months. As, whenever you are building a new version of the software/ui, a lot of efforts are distributed across various teams; so it takes a lot of time and hard work to put the thoughts together and bring something unique to the users in this competitive environment.

What role does India R&D Center play in new launches? Are there any localized features in Coloros7.2? As you must be aware, we have our largest R&D centre situated in Hyderabad, India. The India R&D centre plays a key role in overall research, planning, development, design and testing of all applications at OPPO. Since India is a focus market for OPPO, the R&D team in Hyderabad works closely with the R&D team in Shenzhen in research, planning and development to support OPPO both in Indian and Overseas market. We also have our design and testing team working independently to bring user-friendly and localised features for all OPPO users across the world.

Coloros team has continuously strived to innovate with features that impact and benefit our users in their everyday lives. OPPO R&D teams in China and India, constantly garner extensive consumer insights, to understand, collaborate and make available localized solutions for users.

A lot of new features for the battery, experience and usage in Coloros 7.2 have been designed with insights from Indian consumers’ smartphone behaviour. Coloros supports over 80 global languages in total, including multiple Indian languages such as English, Hindi, Marathi and Bangla. We aim to strengthen this proposition even further by adding more languages in the future for our users.

Can you briefly introduce the concept of OPPO Labs? The unique platform is one of its kind initiatives where OPPO engineers and users can work together to co-create innovative features. It’s a platform where users can not only experience the latest fun features but can also upvote or downvote to support features they like or even allow them to put forward their ideas directly to OPPO’S product team.

Users can try out the latest and inventive features before they are officially released. They can also provide feedback on a certain feature or share it with others. The corresponding product owners will be considering user feedback and response before the official launch of such functions.

Right now, OPPO Lab supports two new functions: Lab Ringtone and Decision Spinner.

Lab Ringtone: By adjusting the style, tone, and rhythm on an easyto-use slide panel, users can create their ringtones. The unique ringtones help create personalized ringtones for calls, saved to the phone, or shared via social media platforms, helping users express their personality. Users can customize 10 different personalized ringtones.

Decision Spinner: Make decisions with the spin of a wheel. This spinner comes preloaded with different questions like “What do we eat today?” and “Where do we go this weekend?” And of course, users always can create your questions and options.

How do you ensure the privacy and security of users? Being a global company, we take the privacy of our users very seriously and to strengthen the privacy and safety of user data, the new operating system comes with a ‘personal information protection’ feature. This feature enables users to protect their personal information from being shared with third-party apps. Privacy Protection also allows you to see which apps require personal information. It also allows you to choose what not to share. For example, if an app asks you to allow access

“Coloros team has continuously strived to innovate with features that impact and benefit our users in their everyday lives. OPPO R&D teams in China and India, constantly garner extensive consumer insights, to understand, collaborate and make available localized solutions for users”

to your contact list and you do not want to share it, Privacy Protection gives you the option to send blank contact information instead. This prevents the user’s data from being accessed, but it does not disrupt the app from functioning normally.

There is a perception that Oppo’s Coloros has an uncanny resemblance to IOS. As someone responsible for developing and improving Coloros for international users, what steps have you taken to improve the user interface of Oppo smartphones? Coloros is based on Android with customized skin and features for the OPPO users. According to the consumer feedback, we have made a clear and dedicated effort to improve the system continues to make it as lightweight as possible for better performance and user experience.

This drive continues to this day. We’ve made such incredible achievements on the journey to Coloros 7, and I’m proud of the progress we are showcasing today. As OPPO’S best OS yet, Coloros 7 represents a new era for OPPO, and I believe that our users around the world will genuinely enjoy the experience.

From Coloros 6 to Coloros 7, we have gone very lightweight and smooth. Going forward, you will see many more customisations in Coloros.

It is said that the company is working to bring near-stock Android experience in its proprietary OS in the coming months. Can you speak about it? With a user base of over 350 million, we are one of the key partners for Google globally.

We work jointly with Google across OPPO devices at the software system level to enrich and empower user experience on Android. Starting from OS 7, consumer insights reveal that users find the new Coloros experience closer to stock Android while welcoming additions we customize for Coloros.

What features can we expect to see in the next version of Coloros? Amid the pandemic, a lot of user data has shown a spike in the consumption of a lot of content on the devices and obviously, they tend to lose the battery because of which we came up with features like ‘Super power saving mode’ in Coloros 7.2, which once switched one, this feature slows the power drain.

We also collect a lot of feedback and do our research. We are working on solutions around the feedback received; the team is working on new developments and providing the best resolution to our users.

Our close partnership with Google guarantees Coloros gets updated with each year’s latest Android version. Working closely with the Android team, we are accumulating first-hand feedback on Android 11 Beta to identify, fix and enhance features for Android developers and endusers. Coloros will also be among the first partnering operating systems to update to Android 11 in the coming months. ■

vivek@mymobile.co.in