Just a month ago, OnePlus co-founder Pete Lau announced that the iconic two-level warning slider switch would be going away. Lau claimed that the company wanted to accommodate a wider variety of functions, which ultimately dictated the button format.
At the time, the company didn’t share any details about what the button would look like and, more importantly, what functionality it would serve. Now it is. The OnePlus executive shared an image of the buttons of the upcoming phone and also revealed details about its utility.
OnePlus China President Li Jie Louis shared a teaser image of the upcoming OnePlus 13T on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. The photo shows a side profile of the phone focusing on the new button next to the left edge of the device, located to the right of where the alert slider used to be.
OnePlus executives have mentioned that they will retain the functional aspects of the alert slider in its default form. This allows users to switch between mute, vibrate, and ringtone profiles at the press of a button. However, he did make it clear that the buttons will be customizable, just like the action buttons on the current generation of Apple iPhones.
Now, the removal of the warning slider is a historic departure for OnePlus and has prompted a fair share of nostalgic online posts. But from a technical perspective, it makes a lot of sense.
When the company first removed the slider on the OnePlus 10T, it opened up enough internal space to fit an additional charge pump, more powerful antenna hardware, and a larger battery.
From a functional point of view, buttons not only take up less internal space, but are also more versatile. There is certainly vivid precedent for this. Apple removed its own version of the alert slider from the iPhone, eventually replacing it with a multifunction tactile button.
The alert slider on your OnePlus phone can’t do much, but the physical buttons can be customized with multiple presses, short presses, and long press gestures, and each button is assigned its own function with quite a few customizations mixed in.
As far as debuts go, OnePlus is set to introduce a multi-function button on its upcoming compact Android flagship, the OnePlus 13T. It is reported to be equipped with Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, a 120Hz OLED screen, a large 6,200mAh battery with 80W charging support, and a powerful camera array led by a 50-megapixel imaging sensor.