Oppo ColorOS 13 First Look: What’s New and What’s Cool?

Following Android 13’s rollout on Pixel devices, Oppo has unveiled their new ColorOS 13, rolling out for Oppo devices from now until the end of September.

Featuring updated design elements which Oppo dubs ‘Aquamorphic’, it now features a more materialistic design with pill and rounded box elements, you can still see the hint of Android 13 beneath but Oppo has managed to sprinkle some of their characteristics into it.

The 'Aquamorphic' design update also extends to icons, which now adopt a more layered and popup design to suit the styling of the new ColorOS.

Control centre customization is one of the areas where Oppo might have cherry-picked the better aspects of stock Android to carry over to ColorOS. If you dislike the larger pill-shaped buttons on stock android notifications, Oppo has chosen to only let the two top control by the larger ones and everything else as smaller circles, this means that you can choose your most frequently used control and have it as the larger buttons.

Aside from that, you also get to enlarge folders on the home screen now, a minor add-on in the grander scheme of things but Google, please put this feature in stock Android as well. It's surprisingly a very neat organisational feature that enhances the customizability and design aspects of your home screen.

Animation and transitions across the OS are more 'softer' and 'natural' now and there are updated illustrations for certain settings as well. Not a lot of difference here but if you have an eye for these sorts of design elements you may notice a thing or two.

The Always-On Display is also improved, allowing media controls if you use Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming apps that aren't supported with this feature at the moment. Notifications icons are also displayed in colour on the always-on display now. Additional customizations for the always-on display include an 'Insights' widget which will collate your phone usage data throughout the day and present it as a vertical bar graph.

That's about it for what's new with ColorOS 13, there are also security and privacy upgrades so if you would like to read more about it you may do so here.

ColorOS 13 will be rolled out for the newer Find series devices first from August to early September and then for the newer Reno series devices from September to October. Older Oppo devices will have to wait slightly longer until the end of the year.