The sobriquet “flagship-killer” is more of a misnomer at this point. OnePlus has failed to deliver on several fronts. Their software stability is disappointing at best with updates being insignificant to mitigate the damage. As a result, the stability issues eat up into the beefy hardware as well making it a hot mess, quite literally. Here’s our take on one of the troubling issues “micro slow-downs”/UI lag issue in UI on the OnePlus 7Pro/7T post-Android 11 updates.
Besides giving clarity to the problems, we’ll also be including a couple of easy fixes. Follow along if you find them useful in any manner.
Is anyone facing “micro slow-down” or UI lag on OnePlus 7 Pro/7T?
Updating the Oxygen OS to the Android 11 version brought many significant changes on UI as well as the core front. The majority of the OnePlus users have appreciated it. But there are some flagship users who typically feel that the Android 11 update has destroyed the buttery smooth experience offered originally.
We are referring to complaints of micro stutters/ slowdowns/UI lag issues of the OnePlus 7 series. Users are finding stutters of few microseconds while navigating through the menu or apps. The otherwise buttery UI is no longer perfectly smooth with occasional micro slow-downs.
There have been reports of UI lag issues typically on using gesture controls. The constant fluctuation in screen refresh rate forced one user to go back to the 60 Hz configuration, but with little result. Small animations are found to be jittery or lag halfway giving a jarring effect overall. The occasional slowdown behaviour is annoying because it worked perfectly well with OxygenOS 10.
One hand gestures are often unnoticed with several taps required to execute an action. When activating controls on the drop-down menu, the chosen options either shut themselves down or fail to register at all. This issue further leads itself into the problem of erroneous or failed connectivity.
The sensitivity of the screen in response to touch has adopted either of the two extremes. It either becomes unresponsive as a dead fish or zooms around like a hyperactive kid opening apps you haven’t clicked on yet.
As a result, keeping the phone in a pocket is likely to toggle a couple of controls and ring some unsolicited calls. Besides touch-input lag, micro-slowdowns have also jumped into the foray. Scrolling down the screen, be it the home menu or a web browser page can have occasional hiccups. This is somewhat annoying especially when OnePlus marketed their 90 Hz screen with much alacrity.
How to resolve “micro slow-down” or UI lag issue on OnePlus 7 Pro/7T?
OnePlus has not officially confirmed the UI lag issues. However, according to a user, he turned on the option of “Disable HW overlays” and it made the device fluid once again. Post disabling the said function has helped him to resolve much of the UI lag issues and the untimed haptic response. Battery life witnessed a slight increase as well. According to some of the other comments on the page, much of the stutter was also resolved with the screen functioning at 90Hz without issues.
Many of the lag spikes in games were also resolved, especially those that focus on precise touch response. Enjoy your Team Deathmatch now, I guess.
However, turning on “disable HW overlays” has its downside. It draws more power on the battery and uses a lot of processing power. It basically forces your phone to run at higher speeds. It also forces each app to constantly check that it’s not colliding with another app on the screen. The disadvantage of constantly running a mobile device under settings of high speed and forced GPU rendering makes the battery suffer.
Another workaround is to head to developer options and either reduce the animation scale down to 0.5 or turn animations off. It has made devices lighting fast with all animation disabled.
Another solution to UI lag issues is to switch back to Oxygen OS 10. However, it isn’t without caveats. All your data prior to the rollback will be deleted.
Most Common OnePlus 7 Pro/7T issues after Oxygen OS 11 update
Apart from the micro stutter of UI after Oxygen OS 11 update, there are many more issues in one of the best flagship phones from OnePlus to date. One such response on Reddit will help you understand!
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections often zone out with users having to restart their phones more than once to regain the connection. The video playback quality often degrades with the usual 720p videos being played on a much lower resolution. Moreover, GPS and Location features tend to glitch out sometimes with users having to turn them back on over and over.
Battery drain has become a staple indicator of unstable Android updates. With Android 11 the scenario is no different. Performance is terrible with basic apps like Whatsapp or Messenger taking too long to open. Fast-paced games like CoD Mobile often face lag spikes that deteriorate as the game progresses. Pretty disappointing for a device that runs on 8GB of RAM under the hood.
The OEM has rolled out few more patches to hotfix the issues but the gap is still there. OnePlus needs to pull up its act else its loyal users contrary to its slogan might “settle” for another brand.
That’s pretty much all there is on our end. Did the solution work? Let us know in the comments. For more similar info, head over to our website here.
