OPPO ColorOS 11 races to be one of the first to roll out Android 11

For the longest time, smartphones from Chinese brands have been regarded as nothing more than iPhone copycats, both in hardware design and in software user experience. That is mostly history by now, with almost all the major brands like OPPO and Xiaomi moving away from that stereotype and developing their own distinct identities and features. This year, OPPO is taking things further by doing what few of its peers usually do to become one of the first smartphone makers to make the shiny new Android 11 available to users, at least in beta form.

Like any phone maker, OPPO tries to deliver a user experience that it thinks will appeal to its customers. That may have involved delivering an iPhone-like experience in the beginning but, fortunately, ColorOS has slowly but surely matured to distance itself from that perception. Perhaps the biggest proof of that now comes in how quickly the company will be able to iterate over the newest Android release, bringing Android 11 to its users sooner than others via ColorOS 11.

To be clear, it's not like OPPO is announcing that ColorOS 11, based on Android 11, is available now. What is being made available, however, is a more public beta testing program for ColorOS 11, at least for those with global versions of the OPPO Find X2 and OPPO Reno 3 Pro.

The big announcement, however, is happening on September 14, 09:00 GMT (05:00 am Eastern). That's when OPPO will fully reveal just how different ColorOS 11 will be, and not just because it's based on Android 11. Perhaps it's a strong hint that the current version of ColorOS, based on Android 10, is actually just version 7.

It's admittedly a big deal for OPPO to make this boast, and not just because it has become evident that consumers value how quickly they can get Android updates. It is pretty much a show of capability that OPPO is able to pull this off, not to mention the maturity of ColorOS that it can now be updated quickly despite and in spite of its remaining custom experiences.