The OnePlus 6 was launched in May as the successor of the OnePlus 5T. Its list of specifications includes the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, 6GB/8GB of RAM with 64GB/128GB/256GB of storage, 6.28-inch Full HD+ (2280x1080) AMOLED display with 19:9 aspect ratio, dual 16MP + 20MP rear cameras, 16MP front-facing camera, and a 3,300mAh battery with Dash Charge support. It ships with OxygenOS on top of Android 8.1 Oreo, and users can install Android Pie beta 3 on the phone. An Android Pie public beta of HydrogenOS was also released this week.
With respect to the dual camera setup, it's generally accepted that the OnePlus 6 is the company's best effort yet. Last month, the phone received the OxygenOS 5.1.9 OTA update that promised major improvements in image quality. We tested the improvements over OxygenOS 5.1.8, and came to the conclusion that that they did improve image quality quite a bit.
However, this doesn't mean that the OnePlus 6 camera doesn't have even more potential. Currently, it falls below flagship Android cameras such as the Samsung Galaxy S9, Google Pixel 2, and the Huawei P20 Pro in low light. A persistent user complaint is that the camera has aggressive noise reduction and applies a high amount of sharpening, which has a negative impact on image quality. This is because a higher amount of noise reduction will decrease the amount of fine detail instead of preserving it. Excessive sharpening, on the other hand, can lead to image artifacts and cause the image to have a less natural look.
The stock OxygenOS camera app doesn't let users adjust sharpness and noise reduction. To give users control over the camera's sharpness and noise reduction, XDA Senior Member txx1219 has released the OnePlus 6 Camera M Mod in the form of a Magisk module that lets users control sharpness and noise reduction applied in post-processing.
The app installs above the original OnePlus 6 OxygenOS camera app, and it replaces it as a system application. If users want to uninstall it, they will need to go to the app info of the OnePlus Camera app > Tap the Overflow three-dot button > Tap "Uninstall Updates."
The OnePlus 6 Camera M mod lets users completely switch off noise reduction for the camera. It comes with different settings for adjusting sharpness and noise reduction, and users are reporting that changing the settings and lowering sharpness and noise reduction does have a positive impact on image quality.
The mod is based on OnePlus 6 camera app version 2..7.3. This is the first release of the mod, and the developer hopes that users play with the different options available to find out the best configurations at different lighting conditions, so that he can define a pattern to be applied in later updates according to users' feedback.
Users can download the Magisk module for the OnePlus 6 Camera M mod at the source link.