After six months of beta updates, Google released the public build of Android 10 on September 3. While the final version doesn't differ too much from the last couple of betas, it means that everyone with a Pixel device and Essential Phone now has access to the latest build of our favorite mobile OS. Android 10 brings a lot of goodies to the table, such as a dark mode, improved permission controls, and new theming options, but it also features Google's new fully-gestural navigation. I've already expressed my disliking of this in another editorial, but not too long after Android 10 dropped, OnePlus surprised us with its Open Beta for an Android 10-based version of OxygenOS — including its own take on the new gestures. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines I've been playing around with the Android 10 Open Beta on my OnePlus 7 Pro for the last couple of days, but within the first few minutes of using it, it didn't take long for me to realize that OnePlus's tweaked gestures are vastly superior to the ones Google is pushing on users. The core functionality of the gestures remains the same. You swipe up from the bottom-middle of the screen to go home, swipe up and hold to access the recent apps page, and do a swipe from the left or right edge of the screen to go back. However, OnePlus has slightly reworked that back gesture so that it's not infuriating to perform.

The nature of the new back gesture inherently breaks slide-out hamburger menus in a lot of apps, and Google's solution to this takes shape in a couple of different ways: Hold your finger on the edge of the screen, wait for the menu to peek out, and then swipe all the way over. Use two fingers to swipe to bring out a menu. Both of these are equally bad. With OnePlus's version of Android 10, the back gesture is performed when you swipe anywhere from about the bottom 80% of the screen's edge. If you swipe over from the top 20%, however, you'll always reveal a slide-out menu if there is one.