I finally upgraded the OnePlus 3T to Android Oreo or Oxygen OS 5.01. There are changes under the hood, the most visible ones are:
1. Finer control of app installation. For older versions of Android, non Play store apps are blocked by the Security toggle “Unknown Sources”. This is to prevent malicious websites from installing apps. Now we have finer control on a per-app basis to grant access to these apps. I have blocked the browsers with this permission.
2. Quota consumption. This change I am still trying to coming to grips with. It used to show the amount consumed or used for data quota, storage, battery. Now it is the reverse. Settings show the amount of quota left etc. For data quota, as you consume more, percentage slowly count down to zero.
3. OnePlus choices for quick settings buttons are weird. There are “Gaming DND”, “NFC” but no Battery button. Yes, there is no shortcut to battery statistics. The only way is to go to Settings, Battery. Yucks!
4. Using Google Camera app on Android Oreo has its advantages. Augmented Reality (AR) stickers! Install 2 services, add an XML file in /system/etc (Yay for being rooted!), restart the phone. The stickers will be available in Google Camera app Settings. The current popular ones are Star Wars.