TechRadar sat down with OnePlus and its partners involved in the company’s Fast & Smooth experience initiative at MWC 2023 in Barcelona. You can watch the panel discussion in full above.
As the name suggests, the Fast & Smooth experience is all about giving OnePlus users the high-performance feel the brand has built its name upon. On the panel were OnePlus President and COO Kinder Liu, SVP and GM of Mobile Handsets, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Christopher Patrick, and TT Ramgopal, Director of Android Partner Engineering at Google.
The panel was chaired by TechRadar’s own Senior Phones Editor Alex Walker-Todd.
Their discussion first focused on what OnePlus’ Fast & Smooth experience entails. It involves a partnership of hardware and software. OnePlus – along with partners like Qualcomm Technologies and Google – work as a team to ensure OnePlus owners have a good time with their phones; whether they are gaming and jumping between multiple demanding apps or when simply doing the day-to-day tasks we all use our phones for.
OnePlus’ Kinder stresses this is much more than the raw hardware performance we're talking about, particularly today when the top phones have so much power on tap. He identifies three problems at the root of most performance issues in today’s devices: system lag, poor network connectivity and lacklustre multi-tasking.
The aim of OnePlus' Fast & Smooth experience is to avoid these entirely.
Qualcomm Technologies power
The OnePlus 11 uses Qualcomm Technologies' Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, which offers 35% more CPU performance and 25% more GPU performance compared to its predecessor. However, there are other elements of the chipset that might not come to mind as readily but are just as important.
Qualcomm Technologies' Chris Patrick highlighted the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s ability to handle up to 3.2 gigapixels of camera data a second. This is what makes the experience of using the OnePlus 11 camera so seamless and smooth, despite there being a mass of complicated computational work in the background for every shot taken.
OnePlus ensures phones like the OnePlus 11 can make the most of this processing power through its work on device cooling. The phone has a new Cryo-velocity VC Cooling System with a 3685 mm2 VC 5673 mm3 crystalline-graphene layer in the mid-frame, and a dedicated layer of crystalline-graphene for the display to significantly increase heat dissipation capabilities, according to Kinder.
There’s no sign of this work stopping either. OnePlus showed off its next-generation Active Cryoflux cooling system at MWC 2023, which can reduce device temperatures while gaming by over two full degrees centigrade.
The importance of software
Google’s TT Ramgopal explained how the Fast & Smooth experience concept goes well beyond phones too. The average US household plays host to an average of 25 tech devices, many of which will need to communicate with your phone.
That's something the Android platform is exceptionally good at; seamless connections between smart devices. One way OnePlus contributes here is by way of regular updates of both the underlying Android operating system and the company’s own OxygenOS user experience layer. The OnePlus 11 is among the first OnePlus phones to offer users a guaranteed four major OS updates (covering both OxygenOS and Android) and five years of security updates, to maintain the Fast & Smooth ethos over the whole period of ownership, not just when a person first buys a OnePlus phone.
More than smartphones
OnePlus is expanding the Fast & Smooth experience to more products besides phones. The industry's first 11.61-inch 144Hz screen was also featured on the first OnePlus Pad, according to OnePlus' Kinder, in order to deliver more screen in a smaller space. Additionally, OnePlus has created features like Cross-screen Transmission for the OnePlus Pad and Dual Connectivity for the OnePlus Buds Pro 2, which enable consumers to switch between devices with the utmost fluidity.
The Fast & Smooth experience will also be at the heart of future devices. OnePlus has confirmed it is working on a foldable phone which will be announced later this year, with an ultimate fast and smooth experience. OnePlus also has announced a technical partnership with gaming developers to showcase ray tracing technology on mobile, with the support of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform.
Watch the full MWC 2023 panel discussion for more insights into OnePlus’ Fast & Smooth experience, and a closer look at the partnership between OnePlus, Qualcomm Technologies, and Google.
