I own (or did, at the time of this article) a OnePlus Nord N200. Overall, it is a sufficient phone for my needs. There are a few things I’ve done to improve the user experience, but which require somewhat specific knowledge to implement. I will be using this article as an ongoing log of hacks that I have found, and how I did them, so that I can repeat them in the future.

Preparation

We will need the command ‘adb’ on a separate computer. To get it installed on Debian 10 Linux, simply run:

apt-get install android-tools-adb

 

On the phone, do the following preparation:

  • Find the “About Phone” section in settings, and tap on the “Build number” field a number of times until developer mode is enabled.
  • Enable “USB Debugging” on phone
  • Plug in phone and accept connection

From a command shell on the host computer, you should be able to run:

adb devices

…and see something like:

List of devices attached
6b9d5236 device

Specific fixes

Disable power+volume vibrate mode shortcut

Seemingly common on OnePlus devices is a shortcut where pressing the volume-up and power button simultaneously will put the phone into vibrate mode. Unfortunately, the Nord N200 is designed with the volume and power buttons directly opposite each other along the edges of the phone. If one wants to push the power button, the natural tendency is to reinforce the opposite side, thus accidentally (and often unknowingly) activating this shortcut.

Use this shell command to disable it:

adb shell settings put secure volume_hush_gesture 0

Disable power+volume screenshot shortcut

Note: This no longer works as of the Android 12 update! I will post a new solution if I find one.

Similar to the above problem, but with the volume-down key. It takes a screenshot. However, the best fix I’ve found so far will also disable screenshotting altogether. It’s up to you to decide if this is worth it.

To disable screenshots:

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.oneplus.screenshot

Re-enable:

adb shell pm enable-user --user 0 com.oneplus.screenshot