Chinese smartphone maker Oppo has announced the release of Android 4.4 KitKat based Color OS 2.0 for Find 7 and Find 7a smartphones. Despite being a stable update, the latest release of Color OS 2.0 is not ready to mass market use right now, thus the company has not released it over-the-air but it needs to be downloaded manually from here.

The full instructions for installing the update are available on Oppo forums and are similar to how one installs a custom ROM. If you are not comfortable with the current method of installation, it would be better to wait for the OTA update.

Highlights of the Color OS 2.0 update

• Refined user-interface: The ColorOS 2.0 has inherited the UI design of ColorOS 1.0, by removing redundant elements from the 1.x icons the new design are more minimalistic and easier to recognize.
• Global Gaussian blur effect: System wide Gaussian blur effect makes the whole system looks more beautiful and consistent in different interfaces
• System-wide animations
• Live Weather 2.0 with new weather effect “Haze” & sound effects
• Global gesture panel 2.0: The new gesture panel is now activated by slide up from the bottom of the screen
• Redesigned task manager: The new task manager design shows every task running in background as a card you can simply slide it up to close it or slide it down to lock it or tap the end all button to close them all (locked apps will not be closed).
• Easy crop for screenshots
• Single layer launcher
• Super power saving: New battery-saving mode extends overall back-up time by reducing animation, underclocking the CPU or shutdown all applications except for calls and messages
• Memory cleaner: Added “Memory Cleaner” in security center, which enables you to control and release memory more easily.