Over the years, OnePlus has built its game mode from an annoying piece of bloatware to something that is really useful when playing mobile games. It can help improve performance, avoid annoying notifications about your games, and give you the tools you need to better communicate and even live stream your games.
Gaming mode is activated automatically when the OnePlus 10T (opens in new tab) detects that a game has started and detected games automatically appear in the dedicated Games launcher. While some OnePlus users have been annoyed by the presence of the game mode over the years, the game mode can be very useful when you play the best Android games (opens in new tab).
How does the game mode work on the OnePlus 10T?
When you launch an app recognized as a game by the Game Launcher, you will immediately see a popup appear on the screen showing that “CPU, GPU, Network” is being optimized. It looks like the image below.
Once that appears, you can access the Game Mode Control Panel at any time by swiping in from the top left or right corner of the screen.
I find swiping from the top right corner is most effective. Swiping in from the top left corner sometimes brings the status bar down, as games don’t scale all the way to the left side of the screen to avoid being obstructed by the front-facing camera.
With the control panel open, you can immediately see the time, temperature of the phone and the remaining battery percentage. You can also adjust the screen brightness by sliding the bar at the bottom of the game mode control panel, or tapping the auto-brightness icon in the bottom right to let the phone do it for you.
The game mode control panel offers many options arranged in a paginated grid, with six options filling each page. Swipe left or right to scroll through these pages. At the end of the page carousel you will find an edit button. Tap this button to change any of the icons in the control panel.
1. To remove options you don’t want in the control panel, tap the minus sign next to an icon in the right panel.
2. To add options to the control panel, tap the plus sign next to an icon in the left pane.
3. To rearrange an option, press and hold the icon you want to move and drag it to the desired location on the page. To move it to another page, slide the icon to the leftmost or rightmost part of the page to navigate forward or backward in the carousel.
Changing the performance options in game mode
Game mode aims to improve the performance of your games, prevent messages and other notifications from bothering you, and even allow better communication while gaming without interrupting your game or navigating away.
Let’s start with the performance settings. Launch a game and follow these steps to adjust performance-related options:
1. Open the control panel by: swipe in from the top left or right corner of the screen.
2. Tap performance.
3. Select your preference refresh rate. A standard refresh rate saves the most battery and can prevent stuttering in some games.
4. Select your preference touch response rate. Ultra provides the best touch feedback by default by sampling the screen at 360Hz, making every tap feel instantaneous. Power saving is only recommended when your battery is low as it will cause some touch latency by lowering the sample rate.
5. You can choose from the standard energy saving modes at the bottom by selecting one of the low power, balanced or professional gamer modes.
Adjust the sound of your voice in game mode
One of the coolest features of the OnePlus 10T’s game mode is the voice modulation feature that can completely change your voice while talking in an online game. Whatever your reasons, sometimes it’s just nice to make yourself sound different, especially in online games where harassment often goes unchecked. Here’s how to do that.
1. Start a game your choice on your phone.
2. Open the control panel by: swipe in from the top left or right corner of the screen.
3. Tap the voice modulator choice. By default, the voice modulator can be found on the second page of the Game Mode Control Panel.
4. Tap the Get on button to go to options.
5. Select the High or Deep options to select the frequency that the OnePlus 10T will modulate your voice. Select Done when you have made your choice.
6. For more customization, you can use one of the preset voices on the next page.
7. Preview your voice by pressing and holding the microphone button, saying something and releasing it to hear the recording in the selected voice.
8. For more voice modulation options, including discord-only mode, select the gear settings in the top right corner of the speech modulation menu.
What else can I do with the game mode on the OnePlus 10T?
Game mode is not just the control panel that can be accessed while playing a game. It is also a dedicated launcher for games and has several other important options worth checking out. Check out the dedicated games launcher by opening your app drawer and tapping Spell to open the launcher.
From here you can launch any game installed on your phone and explore further the features of the game mode by pressing the overflow menu — that’s the three dots in the top right corner of the game launcher — then tap settings.
Here you will find a number of useful functions, such as:
- Answer calls on the speakerphone, which answers every incoming call through the phone speaker instead of holding it to your ear. Very useful if you can’t pause a game, but still have important calls coming in.
- Brightness lock, which ensures that automatic brightness doesn’t ruin your gameplay. Nobody wants to play a game on a dark screen!
- 4D vibration, which uses OnePlus’ excellent haptics engine to vibrate along with various types of audio and visual cues. Some games work better than others with this setting, but give it a try if you enjoy a high-quality haptic experience.
- Lightning Start keeps frequently used games in memory, so they don’t have to be restarted every time you want to play. That doesn’t mean they run in the background, rather than keeping apps in a suspended state rather than being completely flushed from memory.
Notification style is my favorite setting here as it allows you to change how notifications are displayed while gaming. While many phones have a game mode that completely blocks incoming notifications – something you can also set in the gaming control panel if you wish – OnePlus offers the option to turn those annoying heads-up notifications into simple text scrolling across the screen, or fancy looking dashes that dart across the screen so you can preview a message without it getting in the way.
My favorite style is bullets, which look like the image below (the text at the top of the screen). To be super unobtrusive, yet allows players to read notifications without missing a beat.
How do I turn off the game mode on the OnePlus 10T?
If you’d rather not have Game Mode enabled at all, disabling it is a fairly simple task. Here’s how to do that:
1. Open the app drawer on your OnePlus 10T’s home screen and tap Spell to open the game launcher.
2. Tap the overflow menu — that’s the three dots in the top right corner of the game launcher — then tap settings.
3. Tap the option next to gaming tools to disable the game mode control panel.
0 Comments