May 28th 2015 was a special day for OnePlus. Afterall, it was on this day that they had promised to release Hydrogen OS, their own homebrewed China-specific ROM for the OnePlus One. And they did deliver, as Hydrogen OS was unveiled to the public in a beta format. Tag along as we take a look at what this ROM has to offer in our Initial Impressions.
Download
You need to be part of the beta group in order to give this Hydrogen OS a spin. However, forum members have been kind enough to share their own links. You can find a number of download mirrors in the OP of this thread. Make sure you have decent download speeds and a reliable connection to download this 618 MB large ROM. There's also a handy torrent present in the thread to help those with unreliable connections.
Installation
For power users, this step should be no different from installing any other ROM.
You will need:
- OnePlus One with unlocked bootloader
- Custom Recovery Installed (TWRP recommended, but others will work too)
Steps:
- Place downloaded ROM zip file onto your internal sd card
- Reboot into recovery mode
- (Optional but recommended) Make a nandroid backup of your existing ROM
- Navigate in the recovery menu and wipe all partitions except your internal storage and USB-OTG
- Install the downloaded zip through recovery
The installation should take a few minutes in recovery, after which you should manually reboot into system.
The first boot will take some more minutes as all the 111 pre-installed applications initialize.
First Boot & Setup
On the first boot setup screen, you get greeted with the language selection menu offering options between two types of Chinese and thankfully, English. What follows the language screen are the usual guides for setting up the phone.
There is an additional setup screen for using a OnePlus account. Unfortunately, the creation process involved using my phone number, which the Input field did not accept.
Surprisingly, I encountered the dialog box for Google's Location Service permissions. This was surprising due to the fact that I did not flash any Google Apps package, meaning the Hydrogen OS ROM comes pre-installed with Google Services.
Homescreen & App Drawer
Once you exit the setup process, you land at the homescreen. For someone using an AOSP ROM for quite some time, this comes as a jarring surprise as Hydrogen OS does not feature a homescreen. Or an app drawer. What you land on is a mix of homescreen and app drawer, much like MIUI. The first page of the "homescreen" contains shortcuts to a few system apps, while swiping to the next page uses the card stack animation to display the rest of the pre-installed apps. You can uninstall user apps directly from here by dragging them to the bin icon.
You can choose the "wallpaper" from the preset choices or from existing images from your Gallery. There are limited ways to customize the homescreen as you can only change the clock display widget from the preset choices. I personally couldn't find any way to add more widgets so I do not know if such an option exists in the first place.
The Hydrogen OS ROM does indeed come preinstalled with Google Play Store, along with a Chinese Market/Play Store alternative. Other preinstalled apps include OnePlusWeather, Camera, Gallery, Clock, Messaging, Phone, Browser, Mail, Calendar, Calculator and Sound Recorder, along with the familiar Google Settings icon.
Lockscreen
The Lockscreen is very minimalistic, featuring only the date and time. Swiping up unlocks the device. You can not access the notification drawer, nor the quick settings panel from here. There are also limitations on setting the Lockscreen wallpaper, as you cannot choose outside of the handful of preset images.
The Android Power Menu available on long pressing the power button is entirely replaced with just a Power Off option that slides down from top. You have to drag it down, and not simply click it, to power off your device. There are no other options available outside of Power Off, and with no way to customize.
Notification Drawer
Swiping from up to down on the homescreen actually brings up a quick search box for apps. To access the notification drawer, you have to make sure to swipe from the very top edge and actively try to start from the status bar. This does feel rather counter-intuitive on a 5.5" phone as it deters one handed operation. Swiping down again on the notification drawer also does not open the Quick Settings panel, while the button on the right that does look like a switch for quick swap to Quick Settings instead takes you to the App Notification Manager screen.
When a notification arrives, swiping to the right will take you to the relevant app, while swiping to the left will dismiss it.
In the hunt for Quick Settings, I managed to swipe from the bottom of the screen, and lo and behold! The Quick Settings slides out halfway from the bottom to reveal shortcuts for various apps like Flashlight, Calculator, Camera and well, Settings. There are also icons for toggling various settings, just like how it is in the Quick Settings panel. There is also a dedicated toggle for VPN, which would come handy for their market.
Recents Panel
The Recent Panel follows the standard AOSP card style, with the addition of a kill-all button.
Settings
The Settings app is rather limited at first glance, offering only a few settings. However, a lot of other options are tucked away inside the visible options. For example, the Apps and Permissions option is home to other nifty features like a Startup Manager called as "Auto Startup", the Notification Manager mentioned above and a Permission Manager (ala App Ops). The Advance Settings option brings up the Developer Options screen, which is enabled by default, saving you multiple taps on the Build Number (the entry of which does not exist).
Phone
The default app in Hydrogen OS features 3 tabs: Call Log (default), Contacts and a "Yellow Pages" tab, along with a Floating Action Button for displaying the dialpad. The Yellow Pages tab is one of those areas in Hydrogen OS which does not have any English elements, but based on my interaction, the tab contains shortcuts for services like Recharge, Cab Services, Movies and Travel.
Gallery
The Hydrogen OS Gallery app comes with two tabs: Photos and All Pictures. The Photos tab which is the default tab, displays only pictures and videos taken via the phone's camera and is presented in a grid layout sorted through date.
The All Pictures tab displays a folder list, with individual elements inside the folders following the grid layout and sorted as date modified. There are no other sort options present.
