At its annual developer’s conference in China, the Chinese smartphone maker Vivo has announced its new Android-based operating system dubbed the OriginOS. The new platform comes with a complete design overhaul that prioritizes widgets and supports advanced gestures as well as memory optimizations.
In a statement, Vivo said,
The genesis of OriginOS centers around three frontiers based on smartphone consumer demands: design, smoothness, and convenience. OriginOS repurposes familiar features with new exciting designs to create the ultimate smartphone experience.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67815704/originos.0.jpg)
New Widgets
The Vivo FuntouchOS was pretty much inspired by iOS. It featured a similar notification design, color palettes, and the use of transparency. OriginOS also follows a similar path.
It comes with a grid-like layout for widgets, which looks a lot like what Apple introduced with iOS 14. Vivo claims that the new design was inspired by Huarong Dao, the Chinese variant of Klotski sliding block puzzles. The home screen can be easily rearranged even if there are multiple widgets of mismatched sizes.
In their simplest form, these widgets are designed to change their look to convey information. For example, a sun or a rainy cloud for the weather app, shifting message bubbles for the SMS app, etc. Moreover, the widgets can update themselves with notifications called “nano alerts.” Users can reveal more information by tapping on the widget.
Gestures
The new OS comes with 26 gesture combinations that start with a tap at the bottom of the screen. There is a new feature called SuperCard that can be summoned by tapping anywhere on display for quick and easy mobile payments.
Performance gains
According to Vivo, the OriginOS has lower RAM requirements and is less resource-intensive. It comes with Multi-Turbo 5.0, a collection of memory optimization techniques, and Memory Fusion, which is basically a swap that adds up to 3 GB of extra RAM by shuffling data to the flash storage.
Visual Flare
The new OS features complex wallpapers called “behavioral wallpapers” that simulate complex motions—for example, swaying of each individual petal of a flower. These wallpapers can also be optimized to match the weather outside by drawing an accurate representation of clouds.
Vivo hasn’t said anything about a release date or which devices will be updated yet.
