We've been familiar with the concept of always-on displays since Samsung made it widespread in 2016 with the launch of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Many smartphone manufacturers, including Google, Huawei, and Xiaomi among many others, have caught up with Samsung on this trend, but one company that has held out thus far is OnePlus. N OnePlus device sports an always-on display feature despite having featured AMOLED panels for years. This is, however, set to change in a future OxygenOS update.

In case you're not familiar with this feature, Always on Display is a feature that typically shows information such as the date/time, battery percentage, and notification icons on the display while the phone is idle. Despite being "always on," OEMs manage to reduce battery life consumption by using AMOLED displays (which can light up just a few pixels at a time to display information while the rest of the screen remains turned off) and reducing the refresh rate of the display considerably. They also prevent screen burn-in by shifting the content a few pixels once in a while.

OnePlus has, however, held off from implementing the feature so far, citing battery life concerns, despite being a feature users have requested for years (and one that they implemented themselves very briefly, and then removed, on the OnePlus 6). Finally, though, in response to the top-rated request in the new OnePlus IDEAS forum, OnePlus will be implementing an AOD in OxygenOS.

We don't know whether this feature will be coming exclusively to the upcoming flagships the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro or if it will be rolled out as an update to current devices. If it is, though, then it would likely come to the OnePlus 7/7T lineup (and their respective Pro variants) and maybe the OnePlus 6/6T. There's also a glimmer of hope for the OnePlus 5/5T, although chances are slimmer for these devices since the upcoming OxygenOS 10 update, based on Android 10, is set to be the last major one for them, and they will likely only get security updates from that point onwards. We also don't know yet what this feature will look like or what kind of information will be displayed.

Source: OnePlus