How does everyone feel about Oneplus phones?
How does everyone feel about Oneplus phones?
Previously on Lemmy: Motorola
Maybe we should just make this a series now.
Never settle for Oneplus.
I've always felt that Oneplus is a brand that I should like on principle of having clean software with barebones but powerful hardware, but in reality, every single Oneplus phone I've seen always had some sort of big BUTs attached to them, so buying Oneplus always feels like settling.
Take the Oneplus One for example, that sandstone textured cover was THE most creative material I felt a phone could have had, and I'm honestly shocked nobody has ever done it again. But along with that of course, comes with the cringy "smash your phone" marketing campaign, the half-hearted attempt to distance themselves from their parent company Oppo, the whole software mess with CyanogenMod/OxygenOS, etc.
Had a Oneplus 3T for a while, same deal: Great phone when it works as intended, but they raised their price without making the phone better, and the inexplicable random restarts/battery drain is so irritating, never had another phone that does that.
Recently they've dropped all pretense of not being Oppo and abandoned their core audience, choosing to have the "courage" to drop the headphone jack. Mediocre Chinese phones with flagship specs are a dime a dozen, I just don't see a reason to buy them anymore.
Pre ColorOS they were my goto. These days Pixel all the way.
Used to be high spec and a low price. Now they're average spec and an above-average price.
Nowadays phones are all pretty similar in price and spec, so I'd rather get a slightly more expensive phone from a company with proven, accessible warranty.
I think Oneplus is a proven company, it's just that they've always proved themselves to be mediocre.
I'm using a OnePlus 6 right now. I've never had a problem, and I'll probably stick with the brand.
All tech is great when it works all the time. The problem is what happens when it stops working. Can you contact them? Where do you send it for repair? How long does that take? All that sort of thing.
What do you use now, or what would you recommend instead?
I have a Samsung at the moment and have had Samsung's for 6 or 7 years. I've only had minor issues with a few of them, and I've been able to visit a Samsung retailer / service centre to actually get them looked at in person.
So, proven reliability for my experience and ability to get it looked at in person is something that means I'm happy to pay more for the phone than I would be for other brands.
They used to be great value, good specs for affordable prices, then slowly turned into premium shit when they got more popular. Same happening with Nothing now.
Exactly that, they were great until 4 or 5, I think. Then they became premium. It's kinda a version of enshittifcation for hardware makers: Pander to enthusiast community at the start, get some marketshare and mindshare, then go premium and raise prices, abandoning the original group of fans.
But they're way too buggy to be considered premium
I've had the 3t for a couple of years until the 6t came out and I'm still using that to this day. I've been happy with both of them, the 6t still works well and although e.g. the camera isn't the greatest I have no intention of getting another phone until this one is completely dead.
That said, I wouldn't buy a newer models since the pricing policy and the move away from their former principles made them a mediocre phone amongst many and I would definitely get a Pixel next if I had to.
So short answer, I really love them but I'm keeping a cautious eye on their choices.
Full disclosure, this is coming from my OP11, so I'm a little bit biased, but this is absolutely the best phone I've ever had. And mind you, my previous phone was the OP7Pro which is an incredible device that STILL works like new after 3 years. So personally, they've been good to me.
However, I am keeping a close eye on their OS and software decisions. I was a little hesitant about this phone at first. The Android 11 OxygenOS was perfect on my OP7Pro. I upgraded to 12 (their merger with ColorOS if I'm not mistaken) and it was just a mess. For the first time since buying it, my OP7Pro had random bugs and stuttering. I immediately reverted to Android 11 and it was back to perfect. Unfortunately, the OP7Pro will no longer receive updates, so if I wanted to try the newest OxygenOS, I needed to upgrade.
OP11 starts with OxygenOS 13 and is slated to receive 5 years of updates, which is awesome for longevity. Some of the decisions they made after the terrible OxygenOS 12 (many changes to the OS, releasing the OP11 as the only flagship without a Pro later in the year, etc.) gave me hope that they recognized their mistakes and were willing to fix them. I decided to give them another shot and got the OP11 in April.
The software is still missing a few (minor) things I liked from OxygenOS 11, but Android 13 makes up for it with some interesting features. And this might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually like what they're doing with the OxygenOS 13 skin. It's hard to describe since there are a lot of small things I probably noticed unconsciously, but I haven't had any bugs and it's been a dream with this device. I do feel like they're listening to their customers again, and trying to get back on our good sides.
In the past I've been burnt by Samsung and LG, but OnePlus hasn't ever let me down (except that atrocious OxygenOS 12, but again, I skipped it). So long as they keep making the effort to listen to their customers and keep pushing the changes/additions we want to see, I'll keep buying their devices and running their OS. Of course if I see a repeat of 12 with OxygenOS 14, I honestly might bail. 12 was so bad I'm never doing that again.
I realize this is kind of rambly, so please let me know if you want me to clarify anything.
Are there any specific features of OxygenOS in particular that you like? Haven't used one in a while.
So I'm not sure if I'm the best person to be giving their opinions as I've used only OP phones for the last 3 years, so the things I like might be standard android these days. Also, rereading my comment I sound like an OP fangirl, so feel free to disregard my comments.
I love their aesthetic. I like the "bubbly" feel to the UI, the font, color choices, etc. I think they're very snazzy. I also love the customization features, specifically the launcher editing UI (it's stupid intuitive), the AOD options, they have their own creepy animoji thing that I kind of love, the transition animations are smooth, and it's cohesion in general is excellent.
It all feels like it belongs together. I have a hard time determining where "standard android" and OxygenOS begin/end. It just feels nice to use and I love leaving my phone faceup just to look at it. It's hard to identify exactly what I love because I haven't been keeping a list or anything, but just this morning I was moving some apps around and between folders and it just did exactly what I wanted in a way my old phones definitely wouldn't. Small, but really exciting in the moment.
Of course, these are all very little things that might not be enough for other folks, but the little things are usually what delight me most. I'm also not a bank, so this phone is absolutely the most expensive thing I own and I try to appreciate it when I can.
I will say, there are things that OP will need to change. For me, things like icon customization and notification dismissal direction need updated. But these are extremely low on my list, so I don't mind it as it is.
I want to add that the hardware on this device alone is worth it to me. It's a beast and the battery is fabulous.
Anyway, I'll stop gushing haha. I didn't realize how much I like it until now. I know these devices aren't for everyone so this is my own opinion. I'm also writing this on my commute so I feel like it isn't coming across as clearly as I'd like. I hope that helped a bit though.
I had a few Oneplus phones, but the 7 pro was my last of theirs. the 5 and 7 pro were phenomenal phones and the 7 pro is still one of my favorites phones ever. That being said, I didn't like the direction they were going and the full merge with Oppo so that oneplus phones are basically stripped down version of Oppo phones, just soured me to them completely. Then you have their non-existent customer service reputation and they've been put on my list to avoid.
I was a huge fan of Oneplus, but will not buy any of their products again
I appreciate they have unlocked bootloaders. Now that I'm comfortable upgrading my old phones with the latest Android and security updates I'll never buy another phone that doesn't let me unlock the bootloader like Samsung. It's why I replaced my Note.
What phones have unlocked bootloader now? Looking to see for options to replace my OP3T lol
Most of the OnePlus series, including older models, is fully supported by LineageOS, and unlocking the bootloader is straightforward. That were the most important reasons for me to go OnePlus. For me and my family there was nothing else comparably easily supported by Lineage with a good price/performance ratio. We currently use 6T and 8T models, that we bought used. The only downside for me is the lack of a notification light.
I'm typing this from a 6t. No complaints with it so far, it's far enough in that I need to replace the battery but that's to be expected. The 6gb of ram has proved to be really helpful in ensuring that things always work and the dual sim has let me combine the work and personal phones into one.
I know it's long in the tooth so if anyone has some recommendations for a replacement that has dual sim and doesn't cost an arm and a leg please reply!
I am only slightly better than a "casual" user in terms of Android phones. The most I've done is flash LineageOS on my phone. I think smartphones have reached the pinnacle for users like me. Like TVs I'm really wondering where smartphones could possibly go from here. As long as all the apps work and the battery can last a full working day I don't think I'll be replacing my 8T any time soon.
If there's one thing I'd be looking for it would be Android's answer to iMessage. But that ball is in Google's court. Ideally it would be an open protocol, preferably they would just adopt something that already exists, like Matrix Chat.
Matrix does seem to be the way forward, but last time I used Element it was absurdly slow, so I don't think it's ready yet.
Have a Oneplus 7 Pro, first Oneplus phone I've owned and it will be the last. Absolutely love the phone itself, but Oneplus as a company, the software they package, the warranty issues, and the direction they've gone as a value pick have all fallen off a cliff since it was produced, and have turned me off to ever upgrading to one of their newer models. That's fine for me though, I have replacement parts on-hand, and a third-party actually maintained rom, so I'm OP7P until the wheels fall off this thing.
Edit: Can't comment with experience on other OP phones, but I've heard very good things about the 6s, it was my second pick when I was looking for a phone at the time.
I had a 6T and really liked it. Got an 8 Pro about the day they disabled the Photochrom filter. That really disappointed me, not because it had "X-ray" capability, but because it was an IR sensor and I was excited to see a world I couldn't see with my visible light spectrum eyes. OS updates seemed to degrade things. I hope their foldable serves them well, but I'm not even considering it since I don't think they could make a good multitasking OS. We'll see when they announce it.
My 5T has been my daily driver for years. I've replaced the battery & USB port on it once so far, and that's it. I've also run LineageOS (rooted + Magisk) since day 1, which I agree is its own set of challenges. Seriously no complaints and I'm not really shopping for anything more right now.
If the Fairphone 5 specs are solid I may take the plunge, but for my needs nothing else out there has been compelling enough to make a change.
I've always been thinking about switching to a 3rd party OS, but been kindof wary due to bank apps and such. Do they work with LineageOS as well?
I don't like them. I think they are trying to be Apple and I hate that because it means higher prices, fewer features. No headphone jack, no SD card slot, no dual SIM, high prices.
That's not meant to be the Android way. Android is all about choice and options. That's what I love about Sony, and why I have a Sony Xperia 10iii - they give you more: award winning design, sleek form factor, fantastic cameras, headphone jack, SD card slot, dual SIM, waterproofing, easily removable SIM tray, notification LED, battery care, long battery life, great OLED screen, NFC, HiRes audio on wired and wireless, MP3 upscale to improve music quality on MP3 tracks, great video recording (up to 4K on mine), support app built in, fast stock launcher will little bloat. I'm even a fan of the dedication Google Assistant button and use it all the time.
And the price was great because I got it on sale for just €350.
That's how Android should be: options, choice, value for money
Edit: I forgot to mention that Sony allows unlocking the bootloader if you want to install other ROM's like Sailfish, Lineage etc
We'll do Sony some other time. Promise.
😊
Is it just me that reads "award winning design" and instantly mentally classifies a post as "likely marketing"?!
WTF is the value for a customer if their phone's design has received awards?
I mean, does any genuine human out there choose the looks of their phone based on the awards it got rather than, you know, personally likeing said looks???!
I stopped reading out of habit as soon as I got to the "award winning design" and "form factor". Such marketing buzzwords are usually a good sign telling me that part of the text has no valuable information and should be skipped.
I hadn't even noticed this habit and I have no idea when it started. I wonder what other subconscious reading optimizations I've made, and how they might impact the type of information I read without me realizing it...
You summed up my feelings on OnePlus perfectly. There was a time I liked their phones (purely because they offered great hardware and a barebones Android experience) but then their devices progressively got worse in every single way. Now, not a single one of their overpriced phones is worth buying.
I just moved away from my 7T onto a Pixel 7. I love my 7T. It was definitely my favorite phone. But it seems like things have changed lately and the newer OnePlus phones aren't what they used to be. I still use my 7T as a game and media player for when I'm chilling in bed.
Fully agree. I still have my 7T Pro, and I'm not looking forward to upgrading it when I have to! I loved when it was a simple upgrade on base android, but with the newer versions, it has veered away from that. I'm disappointed with the updates - I haven't done the latest update as lots of people are complaining that it's very buggy, and it doesn't look like they are going to update it again.
I don't think I'd go for a OnePlus again - I'd probably go with something more stock, with hopefully more reliable updates, like a Pixel.
I did a similar 7 pro to 7 pro (OnePlus to Pixel) move. It was striking how much better the camera is, and at this point I'd be hard-pressed to go back to OnePlus. I had a OnePlus 3 before the 7 Pro and it also had a crummy camera. The Pixel software experience also feels a little more polished (but only just) and the voice recognition absolutely wipes the floor with the OnePlus.
I'm using OP6 and for 2023 it's rocking like a brand new phone. Everything works exactly as I want and I rooted and installed AOSP 13 so I'm pretty much up to date, about the new ones I'm not quite sure what to say; far as I heard the new OnePlus is Nothing Phone
Got an OP6 back in 2019 and definitely has that new phone energy. Sadly I suffer from LinusDropItis and so my phone has developed a cracked corner that is now essentially a crack in the corner of my heart. Thinking about 11, but would rather stick with OP6 until the battery or screen goes. This warrior has lasted me longer than my last 3 phones combined. Carl Pei was 1/2 of the Oneplus founder's team together with Pete Lau. He left Oneplus/OPPO in 2020 and announced Nothing Phone in 2021. I just had my hands on a Nothing (1) a couple days back, and I really wanna like it, but the lights just seem too strange for me.
Honestly same, Nothing Phone looks amazing in photos but irl? I don't know men, I don't like alien lights at 3 am from Twitter but in the spectrum of new design, improvements and specifications per-total it's something new
Fun fact: Steve Huffman (CEO of Reddit) is one of the investors of Nothing Phone https://us.nothing.tech/pages/about
My friend recommended the brand saying he never had a problem with it and it was as fast as the day he got it. My wife got one because her Pixel 3 died (apparently a relatively common thing for that model). Then after my wife got one my friend started complaining about his phone and my wife didn't like her new phone. Then he got a pixel lol. Then I got one. It's a nice phone. The Pixel 3 was my wife's favorite before it died. So 2 years later we ditched the one plus for a new Pixel for her.
It seems like one plus used to be a good brand and maybe my friend had some loyalty still or his phone coincidentally started to slow down right after he recommended it lol
I'm still on a OnePlus 3 (literally replying on it).
I like that I can just unlock the bootloader and flash LineageOS without any artificial restrictions. It gets annoying having to look for specific models of Moto that van be unlocked or hoping the one I get from Amazon is actually not from a carrier. OnePlus is pretty much a safe bet.
Looking for a successor before this one gives up the ghost. Lol
Replying to your old post to ask what rom your running on your OP3. I've got an old one I'm looking to breath some new life into.
I currently have a 7T. It's not bad. Felt pretty impressive at the time that I got it. These days I feel like the camera is a bit lacklustre and every now and then something freezes. I'm gonna upgrade to something else soon. Probably something much higher end as I'm more comfortable spending money on a high end phone these days. But it's been a pretty solid phone, especially for its price and age.
I'm also a 7T user. The thing I expect to miss the most is the pop up front facing camera, that still feels cool as hell.
I used to love them.
I "won" the opportunity to get the OnePlus One.
Was such a great device, I love flashing ROMs on it, even got the bamboo back.
Pretty much every device since the first has been just a slow transition into being your average phone OEM.
They are nothing special anymore.
And now that other OEMs have less crappy skins (and OnePlus' skin got worse) there's really no reason to buy them anymore.
Kinda sad.
Kinda like reddit, I suppose.
As somebody who doesn't want the US gov access into my phone, I love my gapp-free, super cheap, easily rooted, boy ass bitch phone.
I agree with your assessment. I never had a OP phone, but they seemed like solid mid-range choices at the start. I did consider picking up a used on recently, but it would have been for installing LineageOS on it. I wouldn't trust the default software that comes on the phone like any Chinese phone.
My wife loves them, I don't care for them though. I used lg phones until they gave up so oneolus was never really my thing.
The Oneplus 7 series was the last one that seemed good. Newer models have worse cameras somehow too.
More like "Hassel-BAD" am I right?
Poco is better
I would prefer Pixel or Motorola
A lot of friends of mine have OnePlus for a reason, but I have personally stayed away since the data collection scandal in 2017 (https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16457954/oneplus-phones-collecting-sensitive-data). I don't trust Chinese phones in general very much because the government can force data collection very quickly but this is documented behavior by the company. I understand why developers use telemetry but everything but the most basic stuff should be opt in.
Typing this comment on one right now
They have good hardware, but their software is—or, at least, feels—unreliable. With so many digital interactions virtually expecting to be done from a mobile device these days, the last thing I want is for the phone to glitch and give up on me when I need it. Yes, customization is nice, but these days I value reliability much more than that, even more than performance in some respects. Unfortunately, that mostly leaves Samsung and Apple as options for "reliable" software...
Their software was great until 2023, an update really fucked up my one plus 7 pro experience. Luckily i already switched to Samsung. I don't know about the newer one plus devices and how their software works on them though.
I really loved the one plus software until 2023, honestly the best, i even considered getting another one plus devices instead of Samsung but Samsung had better hardware
I had a OnePlus 6T and a OnePlus 8T.
OnePlus 6T: had it for 1.5 years and sold it because it had some weird bugs (can't remember exactly which).
OnePlus 8T: had it for almost 2 years. Updated to Android 12, was shit after few weeks. Factory reset to 11, used that a long time. Updated to 12 for a a few days and then to Android 13. Was alright but again a few bugs. Factory reset it again a few (staying on Android 13). Later Factory reset it to Android 11.
I have factory reset it 5 times in 1 the last year i had the OnePlus 8T.
And despite the many factory resets, every few days had a bug where it became so slow it wasn't useable anymore and had to reboot.
Short story: OnePlus had a lot of potential and I bought a OnePlus 6T for the price and the good software support they had in 2018. I feel a little betrayed because they became so worse over the few years I had my OnePlus phones.
I now have a Samsung S23 Ultra which has good software support and yes it has some bloat. But i don't have stupid bugs and the phone stays fast.
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I got a OnePlus Nord. I think they are pushing too many phones. They do like Xiaomi, they announce a phone, it doesn't even have time to arrive in the stores that a new one is already announced. This is confusing as they need to resort to ridiculous naming like "OnePlus Nord 2 ce lite se 5g". Stores can't hold 100 identical phones that are differing only in the name. The store where i bought my Nord, dropped OnePlus entirely because "we already carry Oppo, vivo, realme, it's the same brand"
And this reflects also in the updates. They can't possibly continue to send updates with this many phones.
I like to get a phone that gets at least 3 years of updates, but in total for the bbk group it means supporting and testing 400 phone models at the same time? They have thousands of employees but they're not enough , what happens is that software development is basically dropped as soon the new model comes out
Why can't they do like Apple??? Just three phones per year. Easier to market, easier to support...