OnePlus bugs aplenty with OxygenOS 12: It's not just you!

Part of OnePlus' motto to "Never Settle" also involved the customer experience when it came to its phones' software. By shipping with an almost vanilla version of Android, the company could ensure speedy updates and at least fewer bugs of its own making. Even some OnePlus fans, however, might argue that that hasn't been the case for a long time, and things might actually start to get worst. The latest OxygenOS 12 release, for example, is irking many OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro owners because of numerous bugs that are partly being blamed on OPPO's ColorOS.

OnePlus' history with its custom Android experiences hasn't exactly been without drama. It started out with the commercial version of the popular CyanogenMod community-developed custom ROM before the two parted ways. It then developed its own OxygenOS for global markets while China got a special HydrogenOS version. More changes are coming with OnePlus' "merger" with OPPO, and not everyone is enthusiastic about it.

OnePlus will continue using the OxygenOS name, but it won't be the same OxygenOS that its customers and fans used over the past half-decade. It will be a sort of hybrid, with OPPO's ColorOS providing the foundations. OnePlus more or less promised that favorite OxygenOS features will remain, but that doesn't seem to be the case with OxygenOS 12.

XDA reports the grief the OnePlus 9 owners are airing over numerous bugs plaguing the supposedly stable update for their phones. Those include issues with phone calls, slow Wi-Fi speeds, broken features, and more. The public beta testing phase is supposed to be over – instead, users appear to be finding significant bugs and missteps unfit for public release.

Some OnePlus 9 owners discovered that the very same favorite features OnePlus promised to keep are gone in OxygenOS 12. Advanced Reboot features, the ability to customize the skin's individual icons, and the OnePlus recording app are now gone. Some of those might sound cosmetic or superficial, but some of those might have also been the reasons fans have stuck with OnePlus through thick or thin.

Unsurprisingly, some users are placing the blame squarely on OPPO's ColorOS, though it's difficult to ascertain if it is really the culprit. Some of the issues might also be due to major changes from Android 11 to 12, which in itself is quite a large set. OnePlus has so far been silent on the matter, but it isn't looking good for the acceptance of the merged OxygenOS and ColorOS Android experiences.