I worked for OnePlus a few years ago, managing its Amazon account.
The culture leaned heavily toward 996: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. I was there during a particularly tumultuous period, and by that point a lot of the staffing had already been hollowed out.
That said, the OnePlus 11, 12, 13, and 15 are great phones. The 13 and 15 in particular have insane battery life. I have never managed to drain either one to zero in a single day.
As far as I know, OnePlus and Motorola are also the only major companies selling phones with silicon-carbon batteries in the United States. It is ridiculous that Samsung and Apple still have not adopted them.
One of my biggest frustrations at OnePlus was how much of the internal tooling remained in Chinese or used poor English translations. Most of the management was also based in China and often did not seem to understand the US market very well.
Probably the most ridiculous example was an internal invoice or payment-submission portal. It was awful to use, but the terminology was even stranger. A submission apparently needed to be “signed” and then “sealed.”
I never asked anyone what the original Chinese term was, but I assumed it referred to the use of a Chinese name chop or company seal. Name chops are stone stamps bearing a person’s or company’s name that are pressed into ink and applied to documents as a form of authorization.
It was a small thing, but it captured the broader problem pretty well: internal processes designed around Chinese business practices were translated literally and then handed to US employees with very little localization.
My Nothing Phone(3) is running pretty well with a sillicon-carbon battery. Bought it on Amazon, so not sure if it's a global model or US specific but it works great.
I worked in the OPPO and OnePlus HQ in Shenzhen. When I had contracts to sign, I wrote my own signature and then I had to go to some procurement person and get them to stamp it with a seal.
I'm really quite curious about the inverse of this from the US. HNers who don't live in the US but have worked for a US company trying to do business in local markets: what weird US-centric idiosyncrasies have you seen companies and US-based leadership foisting upon local markets?
Tangentially related, but I work for a New Zealand company that does civil engineering work, including some in the US. There's a lot of localization that we have to do around roads being much wider and different materials being used, but the main idiosyncrasy is that in New Zealand we can just call people up on the phone or via email and arrange contracts, but for large jurisdictions in the US there is a competitive bidding process that we (as a foreign company) can't just circumvent.
My boss wanted to investigate some sinkholes on the runway at LaGuardia to calibrate a device, and was confused that I (the token American) couldn't just call up the Port Authority of New York and get our truck of equipment onto a runway the same week. I tried to explain to a coworker that American airports and the Port Authority in particular are very sensitive about what they allow airside, and he said "oh, so we don't get hit by a plane." I had to explain the last 25 years of American history to him.
> the main idiosyncrasy is that in New Zealand we can just call people up on the phone or via email and arrange contracts,
That sounds pretty corrupt. I've recently commented that countries with lower corruption perceptions probably have more corruption, and New Zealand is one of the lowest.
Unless you're some kind of competitively approved supplier that's chosen by default because you consistently do good work.
Why are you randomly wanting to go to an airport to measure sinkholes to calibrate a device? Why can't you make an artificial calibration sinkhole for your sinkhole meter, why do US airports have sinkholes, and why do you expect the airport to pay you for calibrating your sinkhole meter?
Nearly everyone on HN would be aware of the great seal of the United States?
That thing I see on podiums and backdrops?
That all formal diplomatic letters are still sealed with to this very day, without exception.
Why would anyone here know this?
We've probably all seen media depicting a medieval king pressing a seal into wax, but it doesn't mean we're familiar with it as a modern legal or procedural thing. Japan has what I assume is the same thing: hanko, a personalized, carved stamp. It's always a subject of surprise and novelty for North Americans who go there to teach English.
A hanko is specifically a stamp (for dipping into ink) not a seal (for pressing into wax) so it is a different thing than the ones diplomats still use. I assume the Chinese one mentioned in the ancestor post is a mistranslation and should have said “stamp” instead but maybe not—I mean, the historical large and small seal scripts are so named for their usage on signets so it’s not like there’s no precedent for seals in Chinese culture either.
OnePlus is one of the saddest stories out there. It was the hacker's choice for a while. It was originally the "Never Settle" phone that ran mostly stock android, had specs maxxed out, price was great, and bootloader was unlocked plus they provided factory images. Those were all reasons I bought a lot of OnePlus phones in the early years.
Then they flushed nearly all of it down the toilet. The day they stopped posting factory images was the day I saw the writing on the wall. Such a shame.
Yeah I remember buying a OnePlus 7 Pro with 12 GB (!) of RAM like 7 years ago. The processor was also bleeding edge and that sucker ripped. It combined with stuff like termux was so capable that I used it to run all kinds of stuff that makes little sense on a normal phone. The day that phone retired (from drop damage) was heartbreaking*.
* It actually ran even longer after that as various utilities but not a daily driver, but when I didn't have it with me all the time the convenience slowly waned and it got forgotten
That's the phone I was using too. Gave it to my wife a couple years ago and she used it until just a couple months ago when it too suffered a fatal drop. Very sad.
Good phone. I was worried about that pop up camera failing at some point, but it never did
Indeed, that pop up camera worried me too but was never an issue. It survived lots of pocket lint, and even beach sand and was always reliable. I'd easily trade the current "notch" approach on most phones for a pop up camera (assuming similar quality).
Boy, do I miss the amount of diversity and innovation we used to have in cell phones. I remember having this phone [1] which put the camera on a little rotating thing so you could use the same one for front or back facing - obviously this either saves money or means they have twice the budget for the cameras as if they had two.
Obviously these cameras themselves were potato cameras compared to modern ones, but this design was still a great innovation and unique. We rarely get many design ideas that are that different today, as everyone mainly just wants to look like an iPhone, and Apple for its part only sits around obsessing on how they can make the iPhone's form more and more featureless and pure.
Not an apples to apples comparison#. iOS uses way less ram than android, plus has memory compression. That’s why Apple gets away with less ram and much smaller batteries with equal or better performance.
iPhones from that era constantly booted apps out of RAM when you toggled between them, making it really slow to have more than a few apps open at the same time.
These issues pretty much never happened with these big RAM android phones.
I know because I had both and it was night and day. Like going from a netbook to a desktop machine.
FYI, Android has had zRAM support since KitKat, which is from (checking notes) 2013. Same year as iOS.
iOS uses way less ram than android
Common measurements I have seen is around 40%, I wouldn't say way less, but it is definitely less. Still, 3x more for a model in the same year is impressive (and more than needed to be competitive with iOS) and we should give OnePlus credit for it.
Sadly a lot of low-ish to midrange phones are going back or sticking to 6-8GB today, thanks to the RAM squeeze and the efficiency of iOS is certainly helping Apple here. Certainly nobody is going to complain about the performance of the iPhone 17, despite only having 8GB RAM.
In Android, Samsung doesn't seem to suffer as much. You can pick up an S26 here with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage for 623 Euro, which is a nice midrange price. I guess there are benefits if you can produce your own memory.
Apple is already past that, with the entry-level 17e starting at 700 Euro. The midrange regular 17 starts at 950 Euro. And according to rumors those prices are likely to increase in spring if not earlier.
What's funny is that due in part to minimum wage laws (which caused some of the inflation) the lowest quintile is arguably the one who's kept up with inflation better than the rest, meaning there has been an improvement in the wealth inequality department. But nobody talks about it. Meanwhile I've lost like 20% of my buying power to inflation in the past 3-4 years even taking the meager raises into account.
> iOS uses way less ram than android, plus has memory compression. That’s why Apple gets away with less ram and much smaller batteries with equal or better performance.
Yeah, by aggressively purging all my Safari tabs (and Apps) unexpectedly, during the most convenient times, like when I'm going through a tunnel on the train and my cellular connection is at its best. Still infuriatingly common on my 17 Pro with 12GB of RAM.
Phones are skimping on RAM lately because of the price spikes due to the AI boom. Phones and laptops are sometimes debuting with less RAM than their predecessors of the same brand.
"Hacker's choice" phones don't appear to sell enough to justify the costs, although they can be a decent strategy for building the initial brand awareness.
Financially speaking, OPPO was right to gut OnePlus all those years ago and streamline their production into selling the same models (with minor tweaks) under the brands that are more known in this or that region. Saves on hardware and software development costs a lot, and once OnePlus was a household brand among the general public it no longer had to appeal to the hacker crowd anyway.
Sad as it is. I bought the One when they were still invite-only and mained it for years, amazing device for the time. Went a bit full circle and using a Nord 3 right now, but I didn't get it because of the brand (just needed a basic secondary smartphone for traveling and got a good deal on it, it's clearly just a generic OPPO brick).
You're probably right, but I would have been willing to tolerate price increases if they hadn't compromised all the other things though (especially factory images, which heavily chilled rooting/mods). I wonder what would have happened if they'd stuck with high end devices (with maybe a low-end line too) and not compromised on the hackability. For me at least I'd still be using them today as long as the price didn't get ridiculous (i.e. stayed in the ballpark with other flagships)
Absolutely not. OnePlus was more known and trusted outside China and should have been the flagship. OPPO has "the smell of factory girl" inside China and in SEA.
Do these kinds of products have to sell as many units as a phone targeting the general population? I mean, most of the target audience will hear about a new release / iteration from blog posts, tech news sites, etc., so marketing doesn't need that much resources.
Other than that, I guess it's also not necessary to fill every casual store like MediaMarkts, etc. because unlike my grandma, tech savvy people can order online.
But I'm not knowledgable on these things, so it's mostly just me thinking out loud.
The overhead of designing the actual phone and then setting up manufacturing processes and supply chains is pretty big. You definitely need to sell a lot to break even on that, especially considering that the unit margins aren't crazy.
it was a seamless sandwich of glass on both sides - no camera tumour.
The metal band around it felt solid (likely stainless steel) and had nicely masked antenna cuts. The phone felt both very light and very solid at the same time.
> Then they flushed nearly all of it down the toilet. The day they stopped posting factory images was the day I saw the writing on the wall.
For me, it was when the killed the headphone jack with the OnePlus 6T. Around the time OP6 was released, the then CEO Carl Pei posted a poll around the headphone jack - a overwhelming majority of users said they used/wanted the jack - something like 80%+). Then they go ahead and release the 6T (and subsequent models) with no jack. At this point most of the OG fans (including myself) felt incredibly betrayed and vowed to never buy another OnePlus again. And soon, Carl Pei himself left the company and it's been downhill ever since.
The OP6 was their last good phone which actually lived up to their "flagship killer" premise without compromising on features.
Their move to ColorOS away from the fully customized stock Android experience with OxygenOS was the nail in the coffin for me.
The overall experience turned terrible, and so many aspects of the OS were changed or worsened for all the wrong reasons. Everything from pulling the notification drawer and managing notifications, to the castrated home screen functionality, was such a disappointment.
Editorialised! No new products, not halts operations. Please be more careful.
OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America.
The difference matters for those of us on OnePlus devices:
Though we will no longer launch new products in Europe, our commitment to you remains unchanged. Backed by OPPO, existing OnePlus devices will continue to receive scheduled software updates and security patches within the support periods originally committed for each device model.
The regulations and requirements are much stricter in Europe, especially around warranty, repairs, and support. There's no wiggling out of that if you sell devices around here.
Will it? My level of doubt is high. There is very little recourse if the company decides to cease operations, which I think they will in the near future.
I think they could easily argue successfully that post-sale software updates were always contingent on continuing operation of the company.
After two years your battery will be almost unusable so genuinely it doesn't matter.
My only issue with oneplus phones, and I owned several of them already, is that they are running incredibly hot on normal usage, and battery capacity detoriates quickly over time.
They do have a great sleek UI and great hardware, not to mention fantastic supercharging capabilities which is a life saver sometimes, but all under the big cost.
Hmm my OnePlus 12 is 26 months old and battery is still phenomenal. I charge it to 80% and easily get a day of use, plugging in each night at 30-40%. I have not experienced it running hot yet.
I did not have battery issues with my OnePlus 7 Pro or OnePlus 9 Pro either. The 7 Pro gave me 3 days of battery! (I upgraded for camera improvements and faster screen refresh rate.)
My last one was 10 pro and battery is essentially dead after 2.5 years of usage. Can't make half of a day, literally unusable, and I'm not a big phone user. Case is made of some really good material, which feels very premium, but runs son fckn hot that you can't hold it in your hands anymore, this is especially true during hot summers, and it got only worse with the last major OS update. This is a heat dissipation issue caused by the materials used, large battery, and hi performance CPU cores so I don't think my case was any special than the others.
I see that the OnePlus 15 follows the same route, and although it has good reviews, and they claim they solved the battery heat dissipation and detoriation issues with some new kind of cells, it seems that it still runs hot according to some reviews I've seen on the yt.
Before that I had OnePlus 7 and more budget friendly Nord, and they were much better than 10 Pro, although 7 shared similar type of issues as 10 Pro. Nord is a bit different because case is not premium, and the battery is not so large, and the CPU is not premium nor the supercharging as well. However, it doesn't run hot and battery after few years of usage is still able to give you a full day without the problem.
I'm pretty convinced that all their flagships with hi performance CPUs, premium case, large battery, and fast charging suffer from the same issues.
Maybe mixed CPU core architecture is an answer to that issue, which might suggest why is so prevailing in other phone manufacturers but I have not dig that deep into the topic
I am not an idiot, I am not keeping my phone on direct sunlight neither do I run on "very high brightness". The phone runs hot on normal circumstances, and in summer when the temperatures are getting higher it becomes unbearable. I hope you understand now.
I've misread that you're having consistent problems across different models, sorry.
If it's just 10 Pro, then google says Qualcomm was having bad years (I've heard about Snapdragon 888 fiasco, but apparently it extended to 8 Gen 1 in OP10)
Oneplus 15 uses a Si/C battery like other higher end Chinese phones currently. It doesn't get hot during normal operation (I don't play games on it) and since I don't use fast charging, for now it looks like it will work for a long time. Still get easily 2 days on a 80% charge.
I had a similar issue with OnePlus 7 but not at this scale. It lasted me for 3, 3.5 years. I think this is becoming a problem more increasingly because of a beefier and beefier hardware that is put into these phones, and the heat dissipation problem hence becomes larger and larger problem which doesn't get automagically solved. I think that the best bet today is to take one with "subpar" CPU and larger battery and not so crazy supercharging capabilities
Interesting -- I thought OnePlus batteries were supposed to wear down LESS than other phones specifically because of their "High amp" charging technique versus "High voltage". After some quick research it seems this is mostly due to the heat generated during charging happens in the charger brick instead of the phone, keeping the heat away from the battery. But I suppose in real world situations it may not have a huge effect.
> After two years your battery will be almost unusable
After two years increasingly complex web apps will have made your hardware obsolete. Batteries can be swapped, bad web development at scale cannot be fixed.
Please see my other comment wrt Nord. What I am talking about is that flagship phones from OnePlus are suffering from the issues I described. I can't say every one of each suffers since my N=1 but the ones with the same characteristics and features I described above I am pretty sure that they do. There's a fundamental design flaw or we may call it a tradeoff.
Sad I have a 6 year old oneplus and was looking for a new phone somewhat soon, would've considered them again for sure. Any alternatives? They always had a reputation for me for being a great no fuss, little bloat and simply fast android phone.
Google’s phones are pretty good nowadays, I feel like they carry that ethos more than modern OnePlus phones anyway. Plus they can be unlocked trivially, which is officially supported, and you can install GrapheneOS on them.
I buy Pixel for GrapheneOS, but the hardware is terrible for the price. They charge flagship prices for what are mid-range SoCs. They are very heavy for the size (e.g. the 10/10 Pro are around 205g) and the weight distribution makes them feel like a brick. Battery life is very mediocre, even with almost no apps or other crap installed. They have also had a lot of hardware/software issues in recent years - spicy pillows, display issues, camera bars that fall off, software updates that resulted in boot loops for many people, etc. In (most of?) Europe, they farmed out repairs to another company and often reject warranty claims if there is as much as a scratch on the case.
I would only recommend Pixel if you want to run GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is stellar and until next year, getting a Pixel is the only way to run it. Also, wait until midway the cycle of a model to get a large discount.
If you do not want to run GrapheneOS, do yourself a favor and either:
1.) Get a Samsung S series (or maybe A5x). It's the only phone besides Pixel that does reliable monthly updates, QPR2 and rolls out major updates fairly quickly. They have a separate secure enclave (Knox Vault). Also, after a few months the pricing is really good (e.g. an S26 with 256GB storage costs 620 Euro here now). You can pretty much remove all of the bloat, including Gemini, Google hot words, Bixby, etc. with UAD. The SoC, battery life, etc. will blow Pixels out of the water.
2.) Get an iPhone. The most secure phone after GrapheneOS and the hardware is well worth the price. Their support is stellar, easy to reach a human by phone, generally easy to get repairs.
I just got a new phone a month ago. I wanted a Pixel so I could run GrapheneOS. After researching the hardware I ended up with a OnePlus 13. Google's hardware is far behind, buggy, and overpriced.
I have a OnePlus 13. Best hardware ever. Running lineage with microg + magisk and use nix on top of termux to install stuff using sudo, including AI harnesses - it's my portable AI workstation now.
The Pixel can run Graphene, which means you can permanently take control of the phone and give Google the boot. The iPhone is entirely controlled by Apple, and you are one OTA away from a hostile "upgrade." By default, everything on your phone is sent to Apple for "backup" too.
I have had a mixed experience. Bought my Mom a Pixel 9a. It seems to be running fine with no issues.
Bought a Pixel 10 Pro XL for myself and had to return it. Connectivity issues (WiFi connected, but no internet), screen losing colors (white would turn gray), ghosting issues (scrolled/hidden content would stay on screen for a period of time).
People need to stop caring about warranties so much. Don't overpay, and have emergency funds. If you break something, fix it or replace it. When someone dropped my phone and cracked the screen, I spent 300€ on a new phone. Not 3000€ because I'm not an idiot.
I mean, I don't particularly understand how "caring about warranty" goes against what you've written after that. Replacing something for free is surely better than doing so for $300 dollars, no?
Are you saying I should have installed GrapheneOS on the phone, possibly discovered that the phone has hardware issues and then go out to buy another phone because I have an emergency fund? Or stick with a new phone that had issues?
Or maybe I have made a mistake by buying a phone more expensive than $300? I can see this one actually, but I was going for something that didn't have ads in every menu as the cheap Chinese phones I was using up until this point.
Outside of the used market, which I tend to ignore due to battery/performance degradation, there's no way for me to buy a Pixel for less than $300 anyways.
This might come as a bit of a shock to you, but not everywhere has terrible customer protection. I was less interested in the (free) 2 year warranty than the 14 day free return mandated by the EU.
I wasn't really risking being denied, as long as I didn't break any rules.
I got badly burned by the Pixel 5a, but especially with Google's support. My wife and I both had 5a, and both died spectacularly right around the end of warranty period. Mine ultimately got replaced under warranty and that replacement died the same way when I was on vacation less than a year later... which they refused to repair under warranty.
They put up such a shit show and had us run through so many hoops with my wife's phone that it ended up being out of warranty by the time they agreed it was broken and needed repaired. The support experience was so painful I reluctantly let them get away with their bullshit, bought a new phone (oneplus) for my wife, and swore not to buy another Pixel phone despite having a strong preference for them and the pure Android experience.
I always wonder what people who say things like this are doing with their phones.
Two generations of phones ago, these performance parameters were fine. What software has come out on Android phones since then that's made that performance level unacceptable?
Pixel phones have always been behind in hardware power. They're not performing at budget level, but compared to most OnePlus devices they are way behind in performance. In the Android world performance means longevity. Any Pixel tensor chip or non-high-end Snapdragon or MediaTek chip has a "smoothness" lifespan of 2-3 years.
> In the Android world performance means longevity.
This is the assumption I'm challenging. What are people doing on their phones that makes a two year old phone feel two years old?
Maybe it's 3d gaming, I don't do any of that on my phone but for any productivity apps, I don't think I've noticed an effective difference in my phone for years.
I think the issue is more the prices that Google charge for what is largely a mid-range phone (except maybe cameras). I don't think people would object as much if Google priced them as Pixels in the old days.
Prices usually get ok halfway the cycle, though this year not as much due to the RAM/SSD squeeze.
I wanted an Android phone without bloatware and ads so my 2 options were OnePlus and Nothing. I ended up buying the OnePlus because I disliked the huge back camera on the Nothing 3a Pro.
Oppo is great, same company as OnePlus. I have the base Find X9 and I'm super happy with it. It's fast, it stays cool, and the battery lasts forever(had it for 8 months now and I still haven't finished a single day with less than 50% battery left, it's nuts)
> will continue to receive scheduled software updates and security patches
but wasn't this after they upgrade you to ColorOS? Where you then can reinstall the old one you're using right now, but will then no longer have updates?
It doesn't make sense because OnePlus is much more known in the West than either Oppo, Vivo or Realme. OnePlus also just sounds like more of a Western brand.
It would have made much more sense to kill those other brands in the West and unify everything under the OnePlus banner.
The branding logic actually makes sense from BBK's internal perspective — OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, and Realme were originally separate fiefdoms under the BBK umbrella, each with its own P&L and channel strategy. When BBK restructured and put OnePlus under Oppo's management, the decision was driven by domestic Chinese market dynamics, not Western brand equity. Oppo's management likely saw maintaining a separate Western-facing brand as an operational cost that didn't justify the diminishing returns, especially once OnePlus lost its 'flagship killer' positioning and became just another rebranded Oppo. Chinese conglomerates often prioritise internal restructuring efficiency over international brand preservation — it's a recurring pattern you see across sectors, not just smartphones.
it's a frustrating pattern for sure. makes it so you can't reward good companies with return business. instead, we get the amazon-seller-experience: an ever-churning alphabet soup of fly-by-night companies hocking low-quality stuff.
I mean, in a vacuum, yes. But it made a huge splash with the OnePlus One, and they had some pretty nice phones since.
Oppo, Vivo and Realme sound like those weird dropshipping Amazon brands. Or the whitelabel brand Android phones you can buy on AliExpress. If I didn't know they are legit brands I would genuinely think you'd be trying to sell me a scam phone that fake-advertised having 12GB memory or a Snapdragon.
As someone who was a big OnePlus fan from the 3 era to the 9 Pro, I saw the decline, I moved over when Nexus died, and had used a mixed bag before then.
OnePlus was on the decline and it was clear it wouldn't be a contender for much longer here in the UK, especially when they merged OSs with the OPPO (?) OS, and software quality went through the floor. I moved to Pixels and currently have a Pixel 9 Pro XL which I'm looking to change as they destroyed the battery life with the march update and it still hasn't been resolved. The Pixel has been solid otherwise and performance is still excellent, but I can't abide having my phone entering battery saver every day by late afternoon.
Nothing(TM) looks like it could be a decent choice, but they're generally weak hardware compared to a 9 Pro XL class device, and I'm not a fan of Samsung any more as a company, though it seems a S2X Ultra might be the only real option.
Where OnePlus excelled over Pixels (at least at one point in time; I've owned both and gone back to Pixel) was that the OnePlus' beefier hardware meant that the camera startup time and autofocus speed was much faster. The cameras were comparable, but pulling out your Pixel and having a noticeable delay between double-tapping your hardware button and actually being able to take a decent picture was painful. OnePlus solved this with their camera software and beefier specs.
Somewhere along the way, the Pixel caught up, and the other quirks of the OnePlus diminished the relative benefit (I recall having some issues with their Android variant, and their charging system not actually following the USB-C spec in a way that was causing me issues). As someone who generally doesn't care about smartphone specs aside from "can it last all day?" and "can I take decent pictures without giving it much thought" the OnePlus line was briefly a great option, but hasn't done anything to make me want to try another one in a decade now.
I can't speak much to other flagship phones; I'll never own an Apple product and my experiences with Samsung's software across other devices means I'll likely never consider them either.
Nothing(TM) looks like it could be a decent choice, but they're generally weak hardware compared to a 9 Pro XL class device, and I'm not a fan of Samsung any more as a company, though it seems a S2X Ultra might be the only real option.
Even the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is getting close to the price of an S26 here and the S26 will absolutely blow it out of the water when it comes to pretty much every facet of the hardware.
Pixel 9/10 Pro XL is a midrange SoC sold at flagship prices. Even the A57, which is a midrange Samsung model that will soon hit 350 Euro is faster single core than the Pixel 9 Pro and on par multi-core. Also has better battery life and despite only being 0.1" smaller weighs 42g less and is much thinner. Gets supported for 6 years and also gets monthly updates. Also doesn't die frequently with spicy pillows, camera bars that drop off, etc.
I still buy Pixels because it has an unlockable bootloader and can run GrapheneOS, but Google's pricing is insane and I wish that they would go back to the old price points. The 10a is the only Pixel with somewhat reasonable pricing for what it provides, but unfortunately they made the hardware differences larger than in the past (e.g. be not upgrading to the latest Tensor SoC).
It kinda feels cyclical, tbh. Bang-for-buck entrant that's friendly to modders shows up in the market, enthusiasts flock to it, it chases a bigger market as it grows, and then it eventually fades out as it loses what made it special in the first place -- assuming it even makes it that far.
I also think of Essential and Poco when this kind of thing comes up.
Nothing looks like a decent replacement for OnePlus for phones, but it doesn’t look like they’ve tackled tablets yet which is unfortunate. Though I never bought one, OnePlus’ tablets have long been on my radar because they’re one of the few Android tablets that use a sensible, more squarish aspect ratio (similar to that of iPads) instead of the awkwardly tall/skinny 16:9/16:10 shape popular in the industry.
The headline "Oppo stops sale under OnePlus brand in US and Europe" would be more appropriate.
OnePlus products were mostly slightly redesigned Oppo products for the past years, built on the same hardware and running the same OS.
Early-on it was an impressive corporate experiment to observe: The giant company Oppo gave one of its members Carl Pei the chance to create an agile sub-brand with an own OS and access to Oppo's supply chain.
Carl Pei succeeded and OnePlus became a disruptive force in many markets for several years.
But Carl Pei already left (to start the UK-based tech company 'Nothing'), the OnePlus OS was discontinued and product development was largely folded into Oppo many years ago already...
I worked at OPPO and OnePlus when OnePlus was being re-integrated into OPPO. It used to be its own org with a separate office, but the team was moved into the new OPPO office.
If you want to understand why OnePlus has been destroyed since then, there's a number of factos that I will just quickly list: OPPO was doing a large international push from 2019, and OnePlus was the little sub-brand that was more successful than it's mother brand. OnePlus was an international team, OPPO fully Chinese, with a CEO and the entire upper management not able to speak English. OnePlus continued to succeed while OPPO couldn't do good marketing. This was embarrassing, so of course OnePlus had to be downgraded. Pete Lau became OPPO CPO and decided that OnePlus should be a lower to mid brand, and the product was changed to reflect that. Lots of people left.
Ego, incompetent management that knew nothing about the world outside of China and terrible decisions that followed, led to the erosion of OnePlus.
It could have made them a real player internationally but they intentionally destroyed it.
Loved my OnePlus One and ran nightlies of Cyanogenmod on it for quite a while. I had that bamboo wood backing on the phone that was really nice to the touch. Premium feel and a hacker phone.
It was quality and lasted for many years. I got it after I left the Apple ecosystem and my HTC One (M7) had become pretty banged-up.
I shifted away from OnePlus as it became more pricey and went with Samsung models over the last many years. I also no longer have as much time to play with LineageOS and nightlies anymore.
I did go back to OnePlus around the 10 series but wasn't impressed enough to keep it very long. I still use the red USB-C cables though.
I feel this is just a case where innovation eventually gives way and the Opportunity acquisition along with the data breach just made it less risk-adverse to innovate on features and pricing which has led to the pull-back.
OnePlus was fun when Cyanogenmod was edgy, etc. and you had the fight against the overwhelming crapware telcos forced on Android users. Still happening, sure, but unlocked phones and cleaner flavors of Android have mitigated a lot of that now.
I still have my OnePlus 9 Pro, sadly I smashed the screen on day 2. Despite the broken screen it still feels and looks like a more premium device than my Pixel 9 Pro XL in terms of hardware, but the software really went down hill after the switch to the OPPO software.
Now I want rid of the pixel because they destroyed battery life with an update in march they've still not fixed.
The software is the differentiator these days with all the flagship hardware being basically the same.
I would love to de-Google, but I need my banking apps, tap-to-pay and Android Auto and a top-quality camera that just works flawlessly.
If Graphene can do all of those I'll move, but the friction is high, I have passkeys and apps that have to be "migrated" such as banking apps, and various other stuff that is nigh impossible without a second device.
i just today pulled the back off my old oneplus 8 pro and put a new battery in it after putting lineageos on there. i decided i was tired of using my locked down Samsung that's full of crap
When they increased prices to $900 for roughly the same quality as Samsung it was doomed.
The OnePlus 7 was such an amazing phone and honestly I remember buying a Pixel after it and realizing how crappy Tensor was and well optimized OnePlus was.
I had the exact opposite experience. I replaced my pixel 1 with a OnePlus 8t and I've been kicking myself ever since for not going with a new pixel. This phone is awful! My original pixel was so much better than the several years newer 8t. I absolutely long for the day I can finally, in good conscience, replace this piece of trash with a new pixel phone. I think the day is near. Finally.
The issues are legion. First thing I noticed was the addition of bloat. The "stock android"was a main selling point for me, but I do not feel they delivered. The ultra fast charging has been nice on occasion, but I think it's done more harm than good: the battery deteriorated faster than any phone I've had before it. I've had lots of issues with the usb-c port, it keeps spitting out cables, occasionally doesn't connect properly. The behind-the-screen fingerprint reader is a really cool feature, unfortunately it's so unreliable I've stopped using it completely since it's faster to use the pin code than doing 8 scans of my finger. Lately the power button has stopped working which is super annoying, if I run out of batteries my phone is dead until an alarm rings, which turns it on again. The sound slider is a cool idea, unfortunately it interacts weirdly with several apps. The worst of which is it opens "find in page"in my web browser any time I touch it. Oh and it became loose and occasionally switches on its own, but that's wear and tear I guess...
I'm using a OnePlus 8T with LineageOS and it's been great for me. I replaced the stock OS day 1, after getting the latest firmware update. I got it off eBay for a decent price a few years ago when AT&T made a bunch of old phones stop working via a whitelist. My OnePlus 5 I had at the time supported VoLTE on paper but didn't make the whitelist for some reason so I had to get a newer model. I don't really see the appeal of Pixel phones. I think I'd still wanna replace the stock OS right away to get the experience I'm used to if I had one. Not even sure I'd wanna go with Graphene.
Besides a mix of older Pixels and other phones, in the past few years I went OnePlus 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and currently OnePlus 13. I was completely underwhelmed by the 8 Pro. If felt like a marginal improvement over the OnePlus 8 for a premium price. The back cracked, water got in, and it stopped working. The OnePlus 13 feels like a significantly better phone in every way.
I was on Pixels since the first generation, and only I recently switched from the Pixel 8 Pro to the OnePlus 15, so I was very late to the game here and missed the peak OnePlus days.
But even so, I've been way happier with the OnePlus than the Pixel. Only thing I miss is the camera quality of the Pixel.
Yeah I recently went to a Find N6 and the battery life is quite literally 40% more than a Pixel. Not to mention the performance is significantly better.
Obviously as a folding phone it's more expensive, but it's leagues ahead of the Pixel Fold as well.
Can someone explain the reason? I think I understand the "WHAT". I don't understand the "WHY". Why are they not going to launch new products in US and EU?
Even reading through all the comments above yours I'm still in the dark. Everyone is talking about how they sabotaged their own business, and Carl Pei leaving, but none of that explains why specifically they aren't launching new products in Europe and the US (but still will in other parts of the world?) Something isn't quite adding up here.
Their nitch in the American market was selling high end devices for mid level prices, now that that is no longer the case, most people would rather get a Samsung for performance, a Pixel for it’s cameras or an iPhone for all of the above.
As someone vaguely in the industry: It's because of the huge rise in RAM prices. One of OnePlus' points was high specs at low price. They don't have the margins to eat current RAM prices.
Just a guess, but it probably has to do with their bullshit DMA meant to hobble western tech so they can attempt to compete. I don’t think it’s long before Apple pulls out as well, that DMA has cost them a LOT of money..
Because their hearts are too heavy and emotional, and their community is too beloved, duh! I really wished companies would just TLDR so you didn't have to read this nonsense every singe time.
It all started when Carl Pie left i suppose. Nothing devices are good but aren't cheap as one plus. They will i guess continue to move in Asia for now i guess.
It wasn't even an experiment for western markets. It was a small team that convinced leadership to try and sell for the international market. The initial focus was China. And then it became an unexpectedly large international success.
I had a OP1, OP3, OP5 and OP7 pro or something before I switched back to Samsung. In the beginning they were flagship phones being sold for half prices, lately I've even forgotten about them.
Good call. I've got the 8t and it's horrendous. I bought because I kept hearing good things about their earlier models and figured it would translate. It didn't.
I remember the hype around the first OnePlus phone, with the invite system. It was the first time I'd had a device loaded with Cyanogenmod that ran relatively stable without any issues. Eventually the capactive touch home button on my OP2 gave out on me but I was a pretty happy user of the OnePlus One, 2, and 3T. I especially liked the removable backplates that had wood options that were pretty neat and felt nice to hold
I suppose Nothing is carrying that torch forward but it's still disappointing to see. Even though most of it was extensions of Oppo tech and ideas into a US/Europe-friendly market position, it still felt like they were innovating and keeping Android ecosystem healthy and interesting beyond simple slab phones.
I was considering looking into a OnePlus phone as my next device for Lineage or Graphene OS, but I guess I'm glad I waited...
The OnePlus One was exciting because I think it genuinely was an Android-flagship-competitor at a much lower price. Prices crept up though, and the last OnePlus I owned was the 5 which was still pretty excellent!
After a brief, very annoying stint using the Fairphone 4 (underpowered & expensive, though I did actually replace both the battery and the usb c port myself and it was exactly as easy as promised), I'm now finally on a Samsung S25+, though I did really really consider the newest OnePlus.
Sad to know that it won't even be an alternative for my next phone, though hopefully by then, memory/silicon prices will have settled and Nothing will have their own flagship alternatives.
Its a pretty big loss for people who care about bootloader unlocking on devices. even the typically bootloader unlocking friendly companies (this includes oneplus in china at least) restricting bl unlocking, i dont know what happens next neither do i want to find out.
The cameras on the Pro versions used to be so good, then starting around one-plus 9 they really went downhill. I have photos in my archive from my OP8 Pro that look much better than those taken with the OP13.
Coinciding with Samsung nerfing the Ultra (aside from the bloatware) - it's not looking like a great landscape for Android Phones.
I'm not sure why everyone is so up in arms here. Just means you can't buy one in a store. I've bought a lot of 1+ for myself and family, and not once for a physical or online Australian store. Just for overseas sites. That doesn't change. The 1+ store in AU was only offering models a couple years old, never the latest. So this news changes nothing for me. Still great bang for buck and easily mod-able.
My family and I have been on OnePlus since the beginning, and I just recently got the 15R (which is a beautiful phone, and awesome bang for buck). I've been recycling all my old OnePlus by putting linageOS or AxionOS, and they feel like new again. The alternative Android firmware space is thriving. I just got Android 16 on a Nord N30 5G "Avicii" - it's blazingly fast. Funnily enough, N30 which is close to 6 years old has 12GB of RAM, which is the same as the latest 15R. I'm still a OnePlus flagship killer fanboy
I've owned four OnePlus phones, but I've been buying other brands lately.
1. OnePlus became nearly as expensive as flagships but wasn't as good
2. The official software used to be almost-stock Android but they bloated it up
3. The ROM scene came to steadily lag several generations behind phone releases
4. Android/OnePlus ROMs are a worse experience than they used to be (dealing with proprietary camera drivers, SafetyNet)
5. They didn't keep pace when other brands committed to longer OS updates
They used to be a good bargain, a clean OS, and a good modding target if you wanted a ROM anyway.
The first two haven't been true for a while now, and the third became a lot less appealing on OnePlus.
I'm disappointed to see OnePlus go but the brand I loved has been gone for years.
“The lawmakers said a recent analysis by a commercial company provided to the committee indicates that these devices may potentially collect and transmit extensive user data -- including sensitive personal information to servers under Chinese jurisdiction without explicit user consent.”
They could do that according to an unspecified "commercial company", as reported in an article titled, "Lawmakers want US Commerce Department to probe Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus".
What a shame, the OnePlus 15 is an excellent phone, especially due to one of the longest battery lives of any I've seen recently, easily lasting 2 days without charging and even acts as a powerbank for reverse charging my wireless earbuds.
I guess I'll have to import Chinese phones now for the US, that's where the innovation is rather than the Apple Samsung duopoly currently present in the US.
I don't even feel about this as I think I should feel. I've owned the OnePlus One, 2, 6 and now 12. Since I got it I haven't been fond of the restrictions which I guess piled up over 7-11, particularly the hell I faced when I wanted to update (but am now avoiding any more updates due to the Anti-Rollback Protection thing they're rolling out). It's still a very sturdy and performant device and I don't intend to upgrade for maybe another 8 years, but I'm already looking to move to another brand (NOT Samsung nor Google) when the time inevitably comes.
This is sad. I had a couple of one plus phones. I'm developing an app on one right now, and I told my mom to get one. She had it for eight years, and it's still working. Well, this is the final push, I guess, that I needed to get a Pixel and install GrapheneOS.
The linked site actually says "North America", which has been incorrectly editorialized to "USA". This is misleading because their announcement appears intended to also cover Canada.
It doesn't really matter for One plus/Oppo/Vivo/Realme/IQOO they all share the same parent BBKE, even they share same OS (at least for some variants), and hardware is very identical across the models, its better they if they reduce it to two sub-brands instead this will atleast reduce consumer's confusion and dilemma while making the purchase.
The OnePlus 3 was my first proper smartphone and the best phone I ever used. Running Lineage, it's faster and more responsive, even today, than a $1000 iPhone from 2024. The quality was amazing. It's a shame to have seen their slow decline over the years as they chased expensive and unpopular hardware trends. RIP
I had a OnePlus 3. It was fantastic for the time, but the limited radio bands really hampers it now. The screen is falling off of it and the battery is not what it was, but it's a decade old.
I used it for about 4 years, then my oldest, and then my youngest. Such a great little piece of hardware.
It's the animations. They're really slow on iOS, at least compared to Android with them at 0.5x (or disabled).
This is really noticeable on more recent Chinese devices. Not only we have a +90Hz display, but I believe there's a focus on animation speed because some reviewers over there test how fast it is to open and switch apps. So we end up with something that is smooth and also feels fast.
With animations and transitions disabled, the OnePlus 3 is much faster to navigate through and do the same tasks than an iPhone 16 Pro. And I suspect the touchscreen digitizer is doing less hysteresis / debouncing / 'smart' mapping of presses than an iphone. It really is so much more responsive, it almost boggles my mind
Why none of these Chinese brands doesn't try to set themselves apart, and dare i say innovate by making a true open phone, documented hw, etc, with at least an open version of android, i don't even ask for one of the true Linux OSes.
You're likely right but i think if you had to fail at least fail for something meaningful. It was crazy thinking it could work anyway, same for makers like Nothing, i feel their fate is written in stone, at least try something really different instead of gimmicks.
Nowhere close to what you asked, but Nothing already seems to be one of the most "open" devices today.
That's for simple fact of having offline/unsigned EDL (Qualcomm's Emergency DownLoad) and files for it getting consistently "leaked". So at least exploratory work on custom ROMs should never leave you with a irrecoverable brick.
Someone in China needs to develop a Mobile OS not Android. Until that happens, they ain’t going anywhere long term and the same applies to personal computers too. Eventually, that has to happen if you wanna get to the next level.
LOL, I wondered why their EU store had basically no stock and remaining items (which I may have snagged only yesterday!) were listed at firesale prices.
I usually don't get attached to brands, but this makes me sad.
I bought the OnePlus One in 2015 after Apple killed my iPhone 5's performance and I was told to just buy a new iPhone (this was before they were sued and added a setting to control throttling on "old" batteries). The phone was fast, had more storage than the iPhone, better camera, no bloat (it ran Cyanogen!), had a notification light, felt nice on the hand (sandstone back), and as a nerd, I loved the amount of Android custom ROMs for it. Liked it so much that at one point everyone at home was using OnePlus Ones.
Also had my disappointments. The OnePlus 2 kept overheating (mainly due to the terrible Snapdragon 810), the camera on the OnePlus 3 wasn't as good as their social media posts made me believe, the slow/lack of software updates, etc, but they were cheap devices.
My last OnePlus was the 8 Pro. By the time I gave it away, it was no longer the same old OnePlus. OxygenOS was replaced by ColorOS (even if they kept the old name), which I never really liked, and prices kept increasing even though some of the weaknesses were still there, etc. It was time to move on.
Still have an old OnePlus One "bacon". No longer use it, but during the Covid years I wiped it and installed LineageOS (currently runs LOS 18.1/Android 11 from August 2023). The battery is bad and the display has some discolouration around the edges, but still runs:
Is this leading to shutting down OnePlus in a global market? I was an early consumer of OnePlus and how it distrupted the market on those time. Sad to see, they cannot sustained with new innovations and ended up being generic in the current market.
They should make a phone with completely open bootloader. As censorship and surveillance is going to be implemented across the West, that could be a great differentiator from the brands supporting loss of liberty.
Almost 5 billion humans have smartphones - as a species wide achievement its utterly incredible. And yet there are two major manufacturers and not even ten with 100M plus handsets (apple, Samsung, xiaomi, oppo, vivo, huawei)
This is a strategic risk right up there with AI ans starlink - and while we don’t want it to stay this way, it’s even harder to imagine how to fix it.
we are descending into a balkanised world of trade wars and threats. Imagine huawei, or apple being told by their respective governments to turn off security services for phones in europe, for example.
It’s not just an AI arms race.
(My tentative solution is governments start to handout devices that provide NFC digital IDs and start growing from there… but that’s a long way from “as good as apple”
I remember when OnePlus marketed themselves as the sort of inexpensive flagship. These past few cycles they've certainly been flagship phones but I don't think there's really been a differentiator.
That's too bad. Had exactly 2 OnePlus devices in the past 8 years.
My current one is a 4 year old Nord 2T still going strong, and in fact K am surprised it still received a recent security update when EOL has been reached.
Time is approaching to switch to a new device. Not sure where to go next. Perhaps I'll wait for the GrapheneOS device.
My wife had fair phone 4, and it was unusable. It was only time she replaced a phone prematurely. She cares a lot about camera though, and likes to take pictures. Her main complaint was that the camera took like 5 seconds to start, so she'd miss the moment. And when it did finally start the quality was really bad.
I tried using it a bit but I couldn't stand how unresponsive it was.
I don't know if their later phones have gotten better,I hope so, because I love everything about that company except their (previous) products.
I think Gen6 should be good enough for basically everything from what I read, but I haven't tried one live yet. The other option is a Pixel 9-something once the 11 is out. but I like the e/OS support of the Fairphone and at some point I want to jump ships.
The fairphone 6 is much better! I've found it to be pretty snappy and the screen quality is nice. Can't speak to the camera quality, but the startup time is not slow.
I think they lost their direction and at the same time customer appeal. When OpnePlus started it was something new, now I have no reason to choose OnePlus for some time already.
When OnePlus started, they were considerably cheaper than flagship phones from others. At $299, the OnePlus One was a ton less than the $650 you'd pay for an iPhone 6 or Galaxy S5. You were getting a 95% flagship phone at half the price. You could get a OnePlus One with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon or you could get a Samsung with 30% the performance and a 640x480 low-res display for the same price.
I feel like the "something new" was price. Over time, that price kept creeping up. Yes, it went from being a 95% flagship to being a 100% flagship, but it also went from being half price to full price.
It was also cool that it used Cyanogenmod which meant you got a community OS that actually got updates, but over time other manufacturers started offering updates for their phones (rather than abandoning them soon after manufacturing). And that was something new other than price. But I think the big thing was that it was a half-price phone when it launched. In 2014, it was just such an amazing deal. Today, it's the same price as Samsung phones.
I bought many of the first models. They were good and very competitive with price and features. Custom ROMs everywhere. But I guess this is not so true anymore.
OnePlus was always a strange proposition to me. I remember debating it with colleagues when the hype started around their first phone. A lot of people and reviewers went crazy over the OnePlus phone, to me it seemed, and still does, as a pretty standard Android phone. The last review I saw was Linus Tech Tips reviewing the latest OnePlus, and Carl Pei commented that maybe Linus issue was that he was used to flagship phones and his expectations was a bit to high.
That really sums it up to me, then OnePlus phones are pretty standard Android phones, they are not really special, at least not to the extend where the brand means all that much to all but a minority of people.
If I had to guess, it's because the phone market is largely dominated by Apple and Samsung, and so it'd be/has been very hard for OnePlus to actually sell their phones there.
Where I'm from OnePlus has actually sold pretty well, competing with price. But then again Finland is one of the most broke countries in EU, so lots of people are price-conscious. Hopefully Oppo will bring some replacement models with equally good price-performance ratio.
I paid 130 euros brand new for my Nord CE 5 with 8GB/128GB configuration. Couldn't be happier with the purchase. All I care is about price/performance ratio and the years of updates promised.
We have the highest unemployment rate in EU, and fast growing public debt (7th highest right now). Trust me, ordinary people here are quite broke after we consider the living expenses.
It's expected that in 4 years our debt to GDP ratio will reach that of Spain right now. And Spain's ratio is decreasing. We'll be right there with Greece, Italy and France soon enough, and I doubt unemployment will get any better.
>As part of the proactive global strategy adjustment, OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America.
So.. they will roll out new products, conclusively? They will sell the same new products globally, including in Europe and North America? They will.. stop selling new phones because they can't form an intelligible sentence? That's the one.
I'm not being pedantic, I'm saying their word salad is hard to read. As demonstrated by half of the messages in here arguing about what actually happened and whether the headline is correct.
It's not hard to say "We will not launch new models of OnePlus phones in Europe and NA. Current models will remain on sale, will still be supported and your warrantee is unchanged."
A pedant might say that telling people to use simpler words is the opposite of being "ostentatiously scholarly".
I probably shouldn't even engage, so hopefully this doesn't come across as too patronising.
If you're genuinely confused about the statement in question, let's break it down.
> OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America
Replace "to conclude" with the definition "to bring to an end". This becomes:
> OnePlus has decided to bring to an end new product rollouts in Europe and North America
That is a very clear message, that there will be no new products released in Europe and North America.
The arguments about the headline elsewhere in this comment section is because the HN headline doesn't reflect that clear message. The HN headline says "halts operations", which implies an immediate end of support.
Good. I have a OnePlus 8t and it's the worst phone I've ever owned. I've hated it since day one, but I'd feel bad replacing a new phone, so I've kept it all these years anyway. It's now old enough for me to consider a replacement (finally!). This announcement doesn't really change anything for me, I'd never buy OnePlus again anyway, but at least it keeps others from making the same mistake I did.
They seem to have a lot of goodwill from customers. I'll never understand why.
Did I miss something, or did you not list any reasons why you do not like the phone? They have a lot of good will from customers because they like their phones...
(great screens, high refresh rate, great photos with a much lighter touch of automatic processing compared to Samsung, awesome physical switch, excellent battery life, fast charging.)
The issues are legion. First thing I noticed was the addition of bloat. The "stock android"was a main selling point for me, but I do not feel they delivered. The ultra fast charging has been nice on occasion, but I think it's done more harm than good: the battery deteriorated faster than any phone I've had before it. I've had lots of issues with the usb-c port, it keeps spitting out cables, occasionally doesn't connect properly. The behind-the-screen fingerprint reader is a really cool feature, unfortunately it's so unreliable I've stopped using it completely since it's faster to use the pin code than doing 8 scans of my finger. Lately the power button has stopped working which is super annoying, if I run out of batteries my phone is dead until an alarm rings, which turns it on again. The sound slider is a cool idea, unfortunately it interacts weirdly with several apps. The worst of which is it opens "find in page"in my web browser any time I touch it. Oh and it became loose and occasionally switches on its own, but that's wear and tear I guess...
There is so much wrong with this phone...
Problem isn't throwing away the old phone, it's getting a new one. I was like this with the iPhone 6. I don't really care and just need a phone that works, but separately, the 6 was the worst iPhone ever cause of batterygate.
I've had a few OnePlus phones - currently a Nord 4 - and have always found them good value for money. Early OnePluses (I think I had a 2 or 3 originally) were incredible value. Also, very fast charging and almost stock Android are lovely features.
I don't understand why you don't like them, because you haven't said!
Yeah I've also heard good things about their early devices, which was why I got this one. Maybe they used to be good? As of the 8t, they definitely weren't good anymore though
I worked for OnePlus a few years ago, managing its Amazon account.
The culture leaned heavily toward 996: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. I was there during a particularly tumultuous period, and by that point a lot of the staffing had already been hollowed out.
That said, the OnePlus 11, 12, 13, and 15 are great phones. The 13 and 15 in particular have insane battery life. I have never managed to drain either one to zero in a single day.
As far as I know, OnePlus and Motorola are also the only major companies selling phones with silicon-carbon batteries in the United States. It is ridiculous that Samsung and Apple still have not adopted them.
One of my biggest frustrations at OnePlus was how much of the internal tooling remained in Chinese or used poor English translations. Most of the management was also based in China and often did not seem to understand the US market very well.
Probably the most ridiculous example was an internal invoice or payment-submission portal. It was awful to use, but the terminology was even stranger. A submission apparently needed to be “signed” and then “sealed.”
I never asked anyone what the original Chinese term was, but I assumed it referred to the use of a Chinese name chop or company seal. Name chops are stone stamps bearing a person’s or company’s name that are pressed into ink and applied to documents as a form of authorization.
It was a small thing, but it captured the broader problem pretty well: internal processes designed around Chinese business practices were translated literally and then handed to US employees with very little localization.
My Nothing Phone(3) is running pretty well with a sillicon-carbon battery. Bought it on Amazon, so not sure if it's a global model or US specific but it works great.
I worked in the OPPO and OnePlus HQ in Shenzhen. When I had contracts to sign, I wrote my own signature and then I had to go to some procurement person and get them to stamp it with a seal.
Appreciate the insight.
I'm really quite curious about the inverse of this from the US. HNers who don't live in the US but have worked for a US company trying to do business in local markets: what weird US-centric idiosyncrasies have you seen companies and US-based leadership foisting upon local markets?
Tangentially related, but I work for a New Zealand company that does civil engineering work, including some in the US. There's a lot of localization that we have to do around roads being much wider and different materials being used, but the main idiosyncrasy is that in New Zealand we can just call people up on the phone or via email and arrange contracts, but for large jurisdictions in the US there is a competitive bidding process that we (as a foreign company) can't just circumvent.
My boss wanted to investigate some sinkholes on the runway at LaGuardia to calibrate a device, and was confused that I (the token American) couldn't just call up the Port Authority of New York and get our truck of equipment onto a runway the same week. I tried to explain to a coworker that American airports and the Port Authority in particular are very sensitive about what they allow airside, and he said "oh, so we don't get hit by a plane." I had to explain the last 25 years of American history to him.
> the main idiosyncrasy is that in New Zealand we can just call people up on the phone or via email and arrange contracts,
That sounds pretty corrupt. I've recently commented that countries with lower corruption perceptions probably have more corruption, and New Zealand is one of the lowest.
Unless you're some kind of competitively approved supplier that's chosen by default because you consistently do good work.
Why are you randomly wanting to go to an airport to measure sinkholes to calibrate a device? Why can't you make an artificial calibration sinkhole for your sinkhole meter, why do US airports have sinkholes, and why do you expect the airport to pay you for calibrating your sinkhole meter?
Subway has ordering kiosks that barely work and take longer than telling the employee your order.
Thinking that they can fire people at will.
Tell us more about silicon carbide batteries!
How much of that internal tooling was related or shared with Oppo?
Signed sealed and delivered?
I'm yours!
> A submission apparently needed to be “signed” and then “sealed.”
... and delivered?
That doesnt make sense as an example. Nearly everyone on HN would be aware of the great seal of the United States?
That all formal diplomatic letters are still sealed with to this very day, without exception.
Maybe it’s just a mental shock that HQ would demand that level of formality for more mundane things?
Nearly everyone on HN would be aware of the great seal of the United States?
That thing I see on podiums and backdrops?
That all formal diplomatic letters are still sealed with to this very day, without exception.
Why would anyone here know this?
We've probably all seen media depicting a medieval king pressing a seal into wax, but it doesn't mean we're familiar with it as a modern legal or procedural thing. Japan has what I assume is the same thing: hanko, a personalized, carved stamp. It's always a subject of surprise and novelty for North Americans who go there to teach English.
A hanko is specifically a stamp (for dipping into ink) not a seal (for pressing into wax) so it is a different thing than the ones diplomats still use. I assume the Chinese one mentioned in the ancestor post is a mistranslation and should have said “stamp” instead but maybe not—I mean, the historical large and small seal scripts are so named for their usage on signets so it’s not like there’s no precedent for seals in Chinese culture either.
Anecdotal counter example: I'm on HN and I have no idea what you're talking about.
OnePlus is one of the saddest stories out there. It was the hacker's choice for a while. It was originally the "Never Settle" phone that ran mostly stock android, had specs maxxed out, price was great, and bootloader was unlocked plus they provided factory images. Those were all reasons I bought a lot of OnePlus phones in the early years.
Then they flushed nearly all of it down the toilet. The day they stopped posting factory images was the day I saw the writing on the wall. Such a shame.
> had specs maxxed out
Indeed, their 10 year old flagship has 6GB of RAM.
https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_3-7995.php
(for comparison, last year's iPhone 17 has just 8GB or RAM, 9 years later)
Yeah I remember buying a OnePlus 7 Pro with 12 GB (!) of RAM like 7 years ago. The processor was also bleeding edge and that sucker ripped. It combined with stuff like termux was so capable that I used it to run all kinds of stuff that makes little sense on a normal phone. The day that phone retired (from drop damage) was heartbreaking*.
* It actually ran even longer after that as various utilities but not a daily driver, but when I didn't have it with me all the time the convenience slowly waned and it got forgotten
That's the phone I was using too. Gave it to my wife a couple years ago and she used it until just a couple months ago when it too suffered a fatal drop. Very sad.
Good phone. I was worried about that pop up camera failing at some point, but it never did
Indeed, that pop up camera worried me too but was never an issue. It survived lots of pocket lint, and even beach sand and was always reliable. I'd easily trade the current "notch" approach on most phones for a pop up camera (assuming similar quality).
Same. Oneplus showed that the pop up camera was a perfectly workable approach for the front camera instead of using a notch.
Boy, do I miss the amount of diversity and innovation we used to have in cell phones. I remember having this phone [1] which put the camera on a little rotating thing so you could use the same one for front or back facing - obviously this either saves money or means they have twice the budget for the cameras as if they had two.
Obviously these cameras themselves were potato cameras compared to modern ones, but this design was still a great innovation and unique. We rarely get many design ideas that are that different today, as everyone mainly just wants to look like an iPhone, and Apple for its part only sits around obsessing on how they can make the iPhone's form more and more featureless and pure.
https://www.mobilecollectors.net/phone/6666/lg-vx-7000
Not an apples to apples comparison#. iOS uses way less ram than android, plus has memory compression. That’s why Apple gets away with less ram and much smaller batteries with equal or better performance.
# pun intended
Of course it's not an apple to apple comparison, the iPhone 7 from the same year was 50% more expensive and had only one third of the RAM (2 GB)
iPhones from that era constantly booted apps out of RAM when you toggled between them, making it really slow to have more than a few apps open at the same time.
These issues pretty much never happened with these big RAM android phones.
I know because I had both and it was night and day. Like going from a netbook to a desktop machine.
plus has memory compression.
FYI, Android has had zRAM support since KitKat, which is from (checking notes) 2013. Same year as iOS.
iOS uses way less ram than android
Common measurements I have seen is around 40%, I wouldn't say way less, but it is definitely less. Still, 3x more for a model in the same year is impressive (and more than needed to be competitive with iOS) and we should give OnePlus credit for it.
Sadly a lot of low-ish to midrange phones are going back or sticking to 6-8GB today, thanks to the RAM squeeze and the efficiency of iOS is certainly helping Apple here. Certainly nobody is going to complain about the performance of the iPhone 17, despite only having 8GB RAM.
In Android, Samsung doesn't seem to suffer as much. You can pick up an S26 here with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage for 623 Euro, which is a nice midrange price. I guess there are benefits if you can produce your own memory.
> FYI, Android has had zRAM support since KitKat, which is from (checking notes) 2013. Same year as iOS.
iOS compresses regular pages, it doesn't need to go through the swap system to compress/decompress them.
This imho should end up having better savings and performance. zswap when it gains support for non-swap usage may close the gap.
> 623 Euro, which is a nice midrange price [for a phone].
How did we get here?
Apple is already past that, with the entry-level 17e starting at 700 Euro. The midrange regular 17 starts at 950 Euro. And according to rumors those prices are likely to increase in spring if not earlier.
> entry-level 17e starting at 700 Euro
Which is 30% less than the original iPhone accounting for inflation.
iPhone 1 launched at 649 Euros in France in 2007 money, or about 980 Euros today.
Given inflation and the increased utility of the smartphone, we're almost certainly at the lowest cost per hour of use ever for most people.
> for most people
For most people, salaries have not kept up with inflation
What's funny is that due in part to minimum wage laws (which caused some of the inflation) the lowest quintile is arguably the one who's kept up with inflation better than the rest, meaning there has been an improvement in the wealth inequality department. But nobody talks about it. Meanwhile I've lost like 20% of my buying power to inflation in the past 3-4 years even taking the meager raises into account.
Our central planners allocated all the RAM to AI and almost none to phones.
> iOS uses way less ram than android, plus has memory compression. That’s why Apple gets away with less ram and much smaller batteries with equal or better performance.
Yeah, by aggressively purging all my Safari tabs (and Apps) unexpectedly, during the most convenient times, like when I'm going through a tunnel on the train and my cellular connection is at its best. Still infuriatingly common on my 17 Pro with 12GB of RAM.
Akshully
Regarding memory compression: isn't the use of `zswap` and `zram` commonplace on embedded Linux at this point?
Phones are skimping on RAM lately because of the price spikes due to the AI boom. Phones and laptops are sometimes debuting with less RAM than their predecessors of the same brand.
"Hacker's choice" phones don't appear to sell enough to justify the costs, although they can be a decent strategy for building the initial brand awareness.
Financially speaking, OPPO was right to gut OnePlus all those years ago and streamline their production into selling the same models (with minor tweaks) under the brands that are more known in this or that region. Saves on hardware and software development costs a lot, and once OnePlus was a household brand among the general public it no longer had to appeal to the hacker crowd anyway.
Sad as it is. I bought the One when they were still invite-only and mained it for years, amazing device for the time. Went a bit full circle and using a Nord 3 right now, but I didn't get it because of the brand (just needed a basic secondary smartphone for traveling and got a good deal on it, it's clearly just a generic OPPO brick).
You're probably right, but I would have been willing to tolerate price increases if they hadn't compromised all the other things though (especially factory images, which heavily chilled rooting/mods). I wonder what would have happened if they'd stuck with high end devices (with maybe a low-end line too) and not compromised on the hackability. For me at least I'd still be using them today as long as the price didn't get ridiculous (i.e. stayed in the ballpark with other flagships)
Absolutely not. OnePlus was more known and trusted outside China and should have been the flagship. OPPO has "the smell of factory girl" inside China and in SEA.
Do these kinds of products have to sell as many units as a phone targeting the general population? I mean, most of the target audience will hear about a new release / iteration from blog posts, tech news sites, etc., so marketing doesn't need that much resources.
Other than that, I guess it's also not necessary to fill every casual store like MediaMarkts, etc. because unlike my grandma, tech savvy people can order online.
But I'm not knowledgable on these things, so it's mostly just me thinking out loud.
The overhead of designing the actual phone and then setting up manufacturing processes and supply chains is pretty big. You definitely need to sell a lot to break even on that, especially considering that the unit margins aren't crazy.
I still remember the wait lists for OP1, 2 and 3. OnePlusX was the sexiest looking phone anyone ever released, before and since.
what makes the OnePlusX look good to you? Just looked it up, it has the standard smartphone look
it was a seamless sandwich of glass on both sides - no camera tumour. The metal band around it felt solid (likely stainless steel) and had nicely masked antenna cuts. The phone felt both very light and very solid at the same time.
The motorola razr was the sexiest phone ever
> Then they flushed nearly all of it down the toilet. The day they stopped posting factory images was the day I saw the writing on the wall.
For me, it was when the killed the headphone jack with the OnePlus 6T. Around the time OP6 was released, the then CEO Carl Pei posted a poll around the headphone jack - a overwhelming majority of users said they used/wanted the jack - something like 80%+). Then they go ahead and release the 6T (and subsequent models) with no jack. At this point most of the OG fans (including myself) felt incredibly betrayed and vowed to never buy another OnePlus again. And soon, Carl Pei himself left the company and it's been downhill ever since.
The OP6 was their last good phone which actually lived up to their "flagship killer" premise without compromising on features.
Really a shame. I had a original 1 (flagship killer) a 3t, a 6t, a 7t a 9 something..I now own a nothing phone.
Their move to ColorOS away from the fully customized stock Android experience with OxygenOS was the nail in the coffin for me.
The overall experience turned terrible, and so many aspects of the OS were changed or worsened for all the wrong reasons. Everything from pulling the notification drawer and managing notifications, to the castrated home screen functionality, was such a disappointment.
This is exactly it. Every competitive advantage they had against larger brands was removed.
Editorialised! No new products, not halts operations. Please be more careful.
OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America.
The difference matters for those of us on OnePlus devices:
Though we will no longer launch new products in Europe, our commitment to you remains unchanged. Backed by OPPO, existing OnePlus devices will continue to receive scheduled software updates and security patches within the support periods originally committed for each device model.
Etc.
Curiosly, they only say this to their European customers. It isn't clear that they plan to continue supporting North American customers.
Either way, eventually operations will halt, because existing products will be out of their update commitments.
Headline would be more accurate if it said "is winding down".
The headline would be more appropriate if it said "Oppo stops Sales under OnePlus brand"
For the past years OnePlus wasn't much more than a sub-brand for slightly redesigned Oppo devices anyway...
Americans get another message that's similar: https://www.oneplus.com/us/adjustment
The regulations and requirements are much stricter in Europe, especially around warranty, repairs, and support. There's no wiggling out of that if you sell devices around here.
OnePlus to NA: https://youtu.be/BwmuvqFzfLI?si=98Ae90_vzS-LFBmi&t=92
I agree, title should have been done a lot better than that.
I think we can read between the lines of the PR speak, though. That’s the rosiest possible way to put this news.
No new devices, support during warranty periods, they’re going to basically stop existing within a year or two.
They're also shuttering their (US) community site in 30 days.
https://www.oneplus.com/us/adjustmentSupport period != warranty period. The OnePlus 15 will get 4 years of Android updates and 6 years of security patches.
Will it? My level of doubt is high. There is very little recourse if the company decides to cease operations, which I think they will in the near future.
I think they could easily argue successfully that post-sale software updates were always contingent on continuing operation of the company.
Phone != The OS
After two years your battery will be almost unusable so genuinely it doesn't matter.
My only issue with oneplus phones, and I owned several of them already, is that they are running incredibly hot on normal usage, and battery capacity detoriates quickly over time.
They do have a great sleek UI and great hardware, not to mention fantastic supercharging capabilities which is a life saver sometimes, but all under the big cost.
Hmm my OnePlus 12 is 26 months old and battery is still phenomenal. I charge it to 80% and easily get a day of use, plugging in each night at 30-40%. I have not experienced it running hot yet.
I did not have battery issues with my OnePlus 7 Pro or OnePlus 9 Pro either. The 7 Pro gave me 3 days of battery! (I upgraded for camera improvements and faster screen refresh rate.)
My last one was 10 pro and battery is essentially dead after 2.5 years of usage. Can't make half of a day, literally unusable, and I'm not a big phone user. Case is made of some really good material, which feels very premium, but runs son fckn hot that you can't hold it in your hands anymore, this is especially true during hot summers, and it got only worse with the last major OS update. This is a heat dissipation issue caused by the materials used, large battery, and hi performance CPU cores so I don't think my case was any special than the others.
I see that the OnePlus 15 follows the same route, and although it has good reviews, and they claim they solved the battery heat dissipation and detoriation issues with some new kind of cells, it seems that it still runs hot according to some reviews I've seen on the yt.
Before that I had OnePlus 7 and more budget friendly Nord, and they were much better than 10 Pro, although 7 shared similar type of issues as 10 Pro. Nord is a bit different because case is not premium, and the battery is not so large, and the CPU is not premium nor the supercharging as well. However, it doesn't run hot and battery after few years of usage is still able to give you a full day without the problem.
I'm pretty convinced that all their flagships with hi performance CPUs, premium case, large battery, and fast charging suffer from the same issues.
Maybe mixed CPU core architecture is an answer to that issue, which might suggest why is so prevailing in other phone manufacturers but I have not dig that deep into the topic
> it seems that it still runs hot according to some reviews I've seen on the yt.
Never noticed it being even warm in normal use, consistently cold.
> this is especially true during hot summers
Sounds like not a phone problem -- very high screen brightness and/or direct sun would make any phone hot.
I am not an idiot, I am not keeping my phone on direct sunlight neither do I run on "very high brightness". The phone runs hot on normal circumstances, and in summer when the temperatures are getting higher it becomes unbearable. I hope you understand now.
I've misread that you're having consistent problems across different models, sorry.
If it's just 10 Pro, then google says Qualcomm was having bad years (I've heard about Snapdragon 888 fiasco, but apparently it extended to 8 Gen 1 in OP10)
Oneplus 15 uses a Si/C battery like other higher end Chinese phones currently. It doesn't get hot during normal operation (I don't play games on it) and since I don't use fast charging, for now it looks like it will work for a long time. Still get easily 2 days on a 80% charge.
> After two years your battery will be almost unusable so genuinely it doesn't matter.
Is this a new thing with newer OnePlus phones? We've had a OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 8 in our house for years and their batteries still work fine.
I had a similar issue with OnePlus 7 but not at this scale. It lasted me for 3, 3.5 years. I think this is becoming a problem more increasingly because of a beefier and beefier hardware that is put into these phones, and the heat dissipation problem hence becomes larger and larger problem which doesn't get automagically solved. I think that the best bet today is to take one with "subpar" CPU and larger battery and not so crazy supercharging capabilities
Interesting -- I thought OnePlus batteries were supposed to wear down LESS than other phones specifically because of their "High amp" charging technique versus "High voltage". After some quick research it seems this is mostly due to the heat generated during charging happens in the charger brick instead of the phone, keeping the heat away from the battery. But I suppose in real world situations it may not have a huge effect.
> After two years your battery will be almost unusable
After two years increasingly complex web apps will have made your hardware obsolete. Batteries can be swapped, bad web development at scale cannot be fixed.
Are you all making sure to set charge limits at night?
Set charge limits to 70%, supposedly quadruples your battery's life (in charging cycles).
My iPhones' batteries have all lasted a minimum of 5 years.
Having said that, my Nokia E71 and Communicator batteries are still usable after 20+ years.
> After two years your battery will be almost unusable so genuinely it doesn't matter.
My Nord 2T battery is still perfectly fine after 4 years.
I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Please see my other comment wrt Nord. What I am talking about is that flagship phones from OnePlus are suffering from the issues I described. I can't say every one of each suffers since my N=1 but the ones with the same characteristics and features I described above I am pretty sure that they do. There's a fundamental design flaw or we may call it a tradeoff.
Sad I have a 6 year old oneplus and was looking for a new phone somewhat soon, would've considered them again for sure. Any alternatives? They always had a reputation for me for being a great no fuss, little bloat and simply fast android phone.
Google’s phones are pretty good nowadays, I feel like they carry that ethos more than modern OnePlus phones anyway. Plus they can be unlocked trivially, which is officially supported, and you can install GrapheneOS on them.
I buy Pixel for GrapheneOS, but the hardware is terrible for the price. They charge flagship prices for what are mid-range SoCs. They are very heavy for the size (e.g. the 10/10 Pro are around 205g) and the weight distribution makes them feel like a brick. Battery life is very mediocre, even with almost no apps or other crap installed. They have also had a lot of hardware/software issues in recent years - spicy pillows, display issues, camera bars that fall off, software updates that resulted in boot loops for many people, etc. In (most of?) Europe, they farmed out repairs to another company and often reject warranty claims if there is as much as a scratch on the case.
I would only recommend Pixel if you want to run GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS is stellar and until next year, getting a Pixel is the only way to run it. Also, wait until midway the cycle of a model to get a large discount.
If you do not want to run GrapheneOS, do yourself a favor and either:
1.) Get a Samsung S series (or maybe A5x). It's the only phone besides Pixel that does reliable monthly updates, QPR2 and rolls out major updates fairly quickly. They have a separate secure enclave (Knox Vault). Also, after a few months the pricing is really good (e.g. an S26 with 256GB storage costs 620 Euro here now). You can pretty much remove all of the bloat, including Gemini, Google hot words, Bixby, etc. with UAD. The SoC, battery life, etc. will blow Pixels out of the water.
2.) Get an iPhone. The most secure phone after GrapheneOS and the hardware is well worth the price. Their support is stellar, easy to reach a human by phone, generally easy to get repairs.
> GrapheneOS is stellar and until next year, getting a Pixel is the only way to run it.
I'm hoping the Moto GrapheneOS phones will be solid. They will be my new primary option if so.
I just got a new phone a month ago. I wanted a Pixel so I could run GrapheneOS. After researching the hardware I ended up with a OnePlus 13. Google's hardware is far behind, buggy, and overpriced.
I have a OnePlus 13. Best hardware ever. Running lineage with microg + magisk and use nix on top of termux to install stuff using sudo, including AI harnesses - it's my portable AI workstation now.
That sounds like a fun setup. I need to try out something like that.
But a pixel is quite a bit more expensive no? At that point you can consider an iPhone?
If you'd prefer an Iphone if it weren't for price, you should probably have a look at refurbished Iphones.
If you are the kind of person who unlocks the bootloader and installs GrapheneOS, then definitely not.
The Pixel can run Graphene, which means you can permanently take control of the phone and give Google the boot. The iPhone is entirely controlled by Apple, and you are one OTA away from a hostile "upgrade." By default, everything on your phone is sent to Apple for "backup" too.
I got a pixel 10 for 350 a few weeks ago.
I have had a mixed experience. Bought my Mom a Pixel 9a. It seems to be running fine with no issues.
Bought a Pixel 10 Pro XL for myself and had to return it. Connectivity issues (WiFi connected, but no internet), screen losing colors (white would turn gray), ghosting issues (scrolled/hidden content would stay on screen for a period of time).
Try GrapheneOS?
Bit hard to do with a phone I no longer have in my hand. Additionally, I wasn't sure if that would void my warranty.
It did cross my mind, and I did buy it for the possibility to do that in the future if necessary, but I just wasn't in the position to actually do so.
People need to stop caring about warranties so much. Don't overpay, and have emergency funds. If you break something, fix it or replace it. When someone dropped my phone and cracked the screen, I spent 300€ on a new phone. Not 3000€ because I'm not an idiot.
Thanks for calling me an idiot I guess ...
I mean, I don't particularly understand how "caring about warranty" goes against what you've written after that. Replacing something for free is surely better than doing so for $300 dollars, no?
Are you saying I should have installed GrapheneOS on the phone, possibly discovered that the phone has hardware issues and then go out to buy another phone because I have an emergency fund? Or stick with a new phone that had issues?
Or maybe I have made a mistake by buying a phone more expensive than $300? I can see this one actually, but I was going for something that didn't have ads in every menu as the cheap Chinese phones I was using up until this point.
Outside of the used market, which I tend to ignore due to battery/performance degradation, there's no way for me to buy a Pixel for less than $300 anyways.
It isn't a free replacement. It's a $50 for a 50% chance of replacement if you need a replacement, and if you don't you still have to pay the $50.
This might come as a bit of a shock to you, but not everywhere has terrible customer protection. I was less interested in the (free) 2 year warranty than the 14 day free return mandated by the EU.
I wasn't really risking being denied, as long as I didn't break any rules.
Consumer protection doesn't normally include buying you a new phone if you damage it.
I got badly burned by the Pixel 5a, but especially with Google's support. My wife and I both had 5a, and both died spectacularly right around the end of warranty period. Mine ultimately got replaced under warranty and that replacement died the same way when I was on vacation less than a year later... which they refused to repair under warranty.
They put up such a shit show and had us run through so many hoops with my wife's phone that it ended up being out of warranty by the time they agreed it was broken and needed repaired. The support experience was so painful I reluctantly let them get away with their bullshit, bought a new phone (oneplus) for my wife, and swore not to buy another Pixel phone despite having a strong preference for them and the pure Android experience.
Be sure not to buy any 'branded' variant, though (e.g. from Verizon etc.)!
Nah the hardware is still crap. CPU performance that's genuinely like two generations behind being sold as a flagship somehow.
Is two generations ago before 2020? Everything is 100% more expensive than pre-2020 prices.
Eating out is there. Power Tools are there. Land is beyond that and Housing has been there for 6 years now.
I'm not surprised. The March of inflation has been a wreckening this decade.
I always wonder what people who say things like this are doing with their phones.
Two generations of phones ago, these performance parameters were fine. What software has come out on Android phones since then that's made that performance level unacceptable?
Pixel phones have always been behind in hardware power. They're not performing at budget level, but compared to most OnePlus devices they are way behind in performance. In the Android world performance means longevity. Any Pixel tensor chip or non-high-end Snapdragon or MediaTek chip has a "smoothness" lifespan of 2-3 years.
> In the Android world performance means longevity.
This is the assumption I'm challenging. What are people doing on their phones that makes a two year old phone feel two years old?
Maybe it's 3d gaming, I don't do any of that on my phone but for any productivity apps, I don't think I've noticed an effective difference in my phone for years.
I think the issue is more the prices that Google charge for what is largely a mid-range phone (except maybe cameras). I don't think people would object as much if Google priced them as Pixels in the old days.
Prices usually get ok halfway the cycle, though this year not as much due to the RAM/SSD squeeze.
I wanted an Android phone without bloatware and ads so my 2 options were OnePlus and Nothing. I ended up buying the OnePlus because I disliked the huge back camera on the Nothing 3a Pro.
Today I'd go for the Bothing 4a/4a Pro.
I wish Nothing was supported by Verizon, would love to try one of their phones.
Why do you need your carrier to like your phone? Do they not mandate interoperability in your country? Are carriers using phone blacklists?
They usse carrier whitelists , Which is even worse.
I cannot activded a EU acquired Pixel for instance. Verizon no longer needs to carrier unlock phones after 60 days too :}
Theres multiple carrier that will auto disable you sim if you move it and charge you a fee for it too !
https://www.howardforums.com/threads/is-metro-charging-to-sw...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MetroPCS/comments/1maa4rt/how_much_...
All of this was such a mind fuck.
Land of the free
Nothing didn’t bother to support Verizon’s most important 4G band, it’s not blacklisted it just won’t work well outside of major cities.
https://www.theverge.com/23803460/nothing-phone-2-verizon-wo...
So use a different carrier?
Oppo is great, same company as OnePlus. I have the base Find X9 and I'm super happy with it. It's fast, it stays cool, and the battery lasts forever(had it for 8 months now and I still haven't finished a single day with less than 50% battery left, it's nuts)
> will continue to receive scheduled software updates and security patches
but wasn't this after they upgrade you to ColorOS? Where you then can reinstall the old one you're using right now, but will then no longer have updates?
Looks like OnePlus and OPPO are different companies. Shared ownership, but different companies.
Oppo owns OnePlus completely.
There used to be BBK Electronics that owned both, but it split up and OnePlus got placed under Oppo.
As other commenter said OnePlus is subsidiary of Oppo. Over past few years they were loosing autonomy / reusing more and more work by Oppo.
If you're worried about the firmware, then current day OxygenOS is just rebadged ColorOS. They just wont be pretending it's different now.
Only question/risk I see is Oppo trying to kill bootloader unlocking with an update.
For now. They'll reneg down the line
Does oneplus have that much market share in the US?
0.1% in 2025, which is honestly higher than I thought it would be. I've never even seen one.
I'm not sure as others why others feel this is a major change.
OnePlus was always a subsidiary by Carl Pei [1] who eventually left the brand to create a new gadgets/tech company.
Nothing [2] is the next project he started that keeps many of the ideas started with OnePlus, good value for money and aim for quality Android.
Bootloader also seems to allow unlocking [3]
In recent years OnePlus was just another Chinese phone.
But if I've misunderstood something, I'll appreciate me being corrected.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Pei
[2] https://nothing.tech
[3] https://nothing.community/d/6047-policies-for-rootingunlocki...
> I'm not sure as others why others feel this is a major change.
Because the phones where available in US and Europe and now they won’t be?
That’s a major change. You can say the company was changing over time, but a move like this is a major change.
I don’t understand how you’d think this wasn’t a major change.
It doesn't make sense because OnePlus is much more known in the West than either Oppo, Vivo or Realme. OnePlus also just sounds like more of a Western brand.
It would have made much more sense to kill those other brands in the West and unify everything under the OnePlus banner.
The branding logic actually makes sense from BBK's internal perspective — OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, and Realme were originally separate fiefdoms under the BBK umbrella, each with its own P&L and channel strategy. When BBK restructured and put OnePlus under Oppo's management, the decision was driven by domestic Chinese market dynamics, not Western brand equity. Oppo's management likely saw maintaining a separate Western-facing brand as an operational cost that didn't justify the diminishing returns, especially once OnePlus lost its 'flagship killer' positioning and became just another rebranded Oppo. Chinese conglomerates often prioritise internal restructuring efficiency over international brand preservation — it's a recurring pattern you see across sectors, not just smartphones.
it's a frustrating pattern for sure. makes it so you can't reward good companies with return business. instead, we get the amazon-seller-experience: an ever-churning alphabet soup of fly-by-night companies hocking low-quality stuff.
To my ears, OnePlus sounds like a low-quality western brand. Along the lines of "Best Value" or "Farmer's Choice"
And Apple sounds like a fruit. The point is they spent big marketing dollars to make the brand not sound low quality anymore.
Then I've never received that marketing from OnePlus.
Also I think the iPhone and MacBook brands are much stronger than Apple itself.
If you're not in the market for Android phone alternatives to Samsung then you probably were not in their marketing sphere.
I mean, in a vacuum, yes. But it made a huge splash with the OnePlus One, and they had some pretty nice phones since.
Oppo, Vivo and Realme sound like those weird dropshipping Amazon brands. Or the whitelabel brand Android phones you can buy on AliExpress. If I didn't know they are legit brands I would genuinely think you'd be trying to sell me a scam phone that fake-advertised having 12GB memory or a Snapdragon.
Oppo and Vivo sound like actual brands, not words slapped together, and also not BFBRJEXGDB
Realme is literally an ID verification system and a terrible choice for a brand.
As someone who was a big OnePlus fan from the 3 era to the 9 Pro, I saw the decline, I moved over when Nexus died, and had used a mixed bag before then.
OnePlus was on the decline and it was clear it wouldn't be a contender for much longer here in the UK, especially when they merged OSs with the OPPO (?) OS, and software quality went through the floor. I moved to Pixels and currently have a Pixel 9 Pro XL which I'm looking to change as they destroyed the battery life with the march update and it still hasn't been resolved. The Pixel has been solid otherwise and performance is still excellent, but I can't abide having my phone entering battery saver every day by late afternoon.
Nothing(TM) looks like it could be a decent choice, but they're generally weak hardware compared to a 9 Pro XL class device, and I'm not a fan of Samsung any more as a company, though it seems a S2X Ultra might be the only real option.
Where OnePlus excelled over Pixels (at least at one point in time; I've owned both and gone back to Pixel) was that the OnePlus' beefier hardware meant that the camera startup time and autofocus speed was much faster. The cameras were comparable, but pulling out your Pixel and having a noticeable delay between double-tapping your hardware button and actually being able to take a decent picture was painful. OnePlus solved this with their camera software and beefier specs.
Somewhere along the way, the Pixel caught up, and the other quirks of the OnePlus diminished the relative benefit (I recall having some issues with their Android variant, and their charging system not actually following the USB-C spec in a way that was causing me issues). As someone who generally doesn't care about smartphone specs aside from "can it last all day?" and "can I take decent pictures without giving it much thought" the OnePlus line was briefly a great option, but hasn't done anything to make me want to try another one in a decade now.
I can't speak much to other flagship phones; I'll never own an Apple product and my experiences with Samsung's software across other devices means I'll likely never consider them either.
Nothing(TM) looks like it could be a decent choice, but they're generally weak hardware compared to a 9 Pro XL class device, and I'm not a fan of Samsung any more as a company, though it seems a S2X Ultra might be the only real option.
Even the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is getting close to the price of an S26 here and the S26 will absolutely blow it out of the water when it comes to pretty much every facet of the hardware.
Pixel 9/10 Pro XL is a midrange SoC sold at flagship prices. Even the A57, which is a midrange Samsung model that will soon hit 350 Euro is faster single core than the Pixel 9 Pro and on par multi-core. Also has better battery life and despite only being 0.1" smaller weighs 42g less and is much thinner. Gets supported for 6 years and also gets monthly updates. Also doesn't die frequently with spicy pillows, camera bars that drop off, etc.
I still buy Pixels because it has an unlockable bootloader and can run GrapheneOS, but Google's pricing is insane and I wish that they would go back to the old price points. The 10a is the only Pixel with somewhat reasonable pricing for what it provides, but unfortunately they made the hardware differences larger than in the past (e.g. be not upgrading to the latest Tensor SoC).
I had the same issue with Pixel 9 Pro battery. Clearing cache of "Device Health Service" fixed the issue.
that sounds suspicious, why does that fix the issue?
Thanks, will try that now!
Playing in slightly different markets, though - OnePlus targetted gamers / power users, whereas Nothing is much more fashion-focussed.
(And seem to be doing so successfully - certainly, you see a lot more Nothings than OnePluses in London)
Nothing has a physical store in central London. Handy for anyone upgrading from the Wasp T12 Speechtool.
It kinda feels cyclical, tbh. Bang-for-buck entrant that's friendly to modders shows up in the market, enthusiasts flock to it, it chases a bigger market as it grows, and then it eventually fades out as it loses what made it special in the first place -- assuming it even makes it that far.
I also think of Essential and Poco when this kind of thing comes up.
Nothing looks like a decent replacement for OnePlus for phones, but it doesn’t look like they’ve tackled tablets yet which is unfortunate. Though I never bought one, OnePlus’ tablets have long been on my radar because they’re one of the few Android tablets that use a sensible, more squarish aspect ratio (similar to that of iPads) instead of the awkwardly tall/skinny 16:9/16:10 shape popular in the industry.
I mean... the major change is that it changed, no? It's kind of unprecedented, or, at least, highly unusual?
The headline "Oppo stops sale under OnePlus brand in US and Europe" would be more appropriate.
OnePlus products were mostly slightly redesigned Oppo products for the past years, built on the same hardware and running the same OS.
Early-on it was an impressive corporate experiment to observe: The giant company Oppo gave one of its members Carl Pei the chance to create an agile sub-brand with an own OS and access to Oppo's supply chain.
Carl Pei succeeded and OnePlus became a disruptive force in many markets for several years.
But Carl Pei already left (to start the UK-based tech company 'Nothing'), the OnePlus OS was discontinued and product development was largely folded into Oppo many years ago already...
I worked at OPPO and OnePlus when OnePlus was being re-integrated into OPPO. It used to be its own org with a separate office, but the team was moved into the new OPPO office.
If you want to understand why OnePlus has been destroyed since then, there's a number of factos that I will just quickly list: OPPO was doing a large international push from 2019, and OnePlus was the little sub-brand that was more successful than it's mother brand. OnePlus was an international team, OPPO fully Chinese, with a CEO and the entire upper management not able to speak English. OnePlus continued to succeed while OPPO couldn't do good marketing. This was embarrassing, so of course OnePlus had to be downgraded. Pete Lau became OPPO CPO and decided that OnePlus should be a lower to mid brand, and the product was changed to reflect that. Lots of people left.
Ego, incompetent management that knew nothing about the world outside of China and terrible decisions that followed, led to the erosion of OnePlus.
It could have made them a real player internationally but they intentionally destroyed it.
Loved my OnePlus One and ran nightlies of Cyanogenmod on it for quite a while. I had that bamboo wood backing on the phone that was really nice to the touch. Premium feel and a hacker phone.
It was quality and lasted for many years. I got it after I left the Apple ecosystem and my HTC One (M7) had become pretty banged-up.
I shifted away from OnePlus as it became more pricey and went with Samsung models over the last many years. I also no longer have as much time to play with LineageOS and nightlies anymore.
I did go back to OnePlus around the 10 series but wasn't impressed enough to keep it very long. I still use the red USB-C cables though.
I feel this is just a case where innovation eventually gives way and the Opportunity acquisition along with the data breach just made it less risk-adverse to innovate on features and pricing which has led to the pull-back.
OnePlus was fun when Cyanogenmod was edgy, etc. and you had the fight against the overwhelming crapware telcos forced on Android users. Still happening, sure, but unlocked phones and cleaner flavors of Android have mitigated a lot of that now.
OnePlus are still edgey, get one of their +5YO phone and put Axion on it - Android 16 like it should be, and super snappy
They were one of the brands with unlockable bootloaders and slide switches for mute. Unfortunately the Oppo takeover didn't preserve either.
Written on a OnePlus 8 Pro.
I still have my OnePlus 9 Pro, sadly I smashed the screen on day 2. Despite the broken screen it still feels and looks like a more premium device than my Pixel 9 Pro XL in terms of hardware, but the software really went down hill after the switch to the OPPO software.
Now I want rid of the pixel because they destroyed battery life with an update in march they've still not fixed.
pixels are fine, just put graphineOS on there.
only gripes I have are mapping apps are slow to initialize. i don't drive uber tho, so it's not terribly inconvenient
The software is the differentiator these days with all the flagship hardware being basically the same.
I would love to de-Google, but I need my banking apps, tap-to-pay and Android Auto and a top-quality camera that just works flawlessly.
If Graphene can do all of those I'll move, but the friction is high, I have passkeys and apps that have to be "migrated" such as banking apps, and various other stuff that is nigh impossible without a second device.
You get all of that except tap to pay in America. In Europe, you get all of them.
Practically all banking apps are supported, and they have a thorough list so you can check beforehand.
Thanks for that. I just looked up the banking app list and all of my (UK) banks are supported.
What's the alternative to Google Wallet for tap to pay and loyalty cards?
EU and NA models still have unlockable bootloaders.
i just today pulled the back off my old oneplus 8 pro and put a new battery in it after putting lineageos on there. i decided i was tired of using my locked down Samsung that's full of crap
Every single day I miss my slider switch. They kept the notification LED longer than most others too.
My OnePlus 13 has a slider switch. Isn't the 15 the only flagship OnePlus that dropped the slider?
I meant that they're increasingly converging to be Oppo phones (now running the same OS, hardware is a slightly tweaked Oppo phone variant, etc).
The loss of the slider switch still breaks my heart. It is my most loved feature on the phone.
This is written on a OnePlus 13 with a slider running lineage os. Amazing phone.
When they increased prices to $900 for roughly the same quality as Samsung it was doomed.
The OnePlus 7 was such an amazing phone and honestly I remember buying a Pixel after it and realizing how crappy Tensor was and well optimized OnePlus was.
I had the exact opposite experience. I replaced my pixel 1 with a OnePlus 8t and I've been kicking myself ever since for not going with a new pixel. This phone is awful! My original pixel was so much better than the several years newer 8t. I absolutely long for the day I can finally, in good conscience, replace this piece of trash with a new pixel phone. I think the day is near. Finally.
I would be so much happier with this comment if it gave any detail about what was worse.
As it is, it’s just a rant not a contribution to dialog.
The issues are legion. First thing I noticed was the addition of bloat. The "stock android"was a main selling point for me, but I do not feel they delivered. The ultra fast charging has been nice on occasion, but I think it's done more harm than good: the battery deteriorated faster than any phone I've had before it. I've had lots of issues with the usb-c port, it keeps spitting out cables, occasionally doesn't connect properly. The behind-the-screen fingerprint reader is a really cool feature, unfortunately it's so unreliable I've stopped using it completely since it's faster to use the pin code than doing 8 scans of my finger. Lately the power button has stopped working which is super annoying, if I run out of batteries my phone is dead until an alarm rings, which turns it on again. The sound slider is a cool idea, unfortunately it interacts weirdly with several apps. The worst of which is it opens "find in page"in my web browser any time I touch it. Oh and it became loose and occasionally switches on its own, but that's wear and tear I guess...
There is so much wrong with this phone...
> I've had lots of issues with the usb-c port, it keeps spitting out cables, occasionally doesn't connect properly.
You've probably got some fluff in the port. Scrape it out with a pin and see if there's a fair bit of crap comes out.
Yep. This is a common problem for pocket devices with USB-C ports. Those suckers collect dust and grime if you don't cover them up.
I usually use the pointy end of a plastic flosser.
I'm using a OnePlus 8T with LineageOS and it's been great for me. I replaced the stock OS day 1, after getting the latest firmware update. I got it off eBay for a decent price a few years ago when AT&T made a bunch of old phones stop working via a whitelist. My OnePlus 5 I had at the time supported VoLTE on paper but didn't make the whitelist for some reason so I had to get a newer model. I don't really see the appeal of Pixel phones. I think I'd still wanna replace the stock OS right away to get the experience I'm used to if I had one. Not even sure I'd wanna go with Graphene.
Besides a mix of older Pixels and other phones, in the past few years I went OnePlus 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and currently OnePlus 13. I was completely underwhelmed by the 8 Pro. If felt like a marginal improvement over the OnePlus 8 for a premium price. The back cracked, water got in, and it stopped working. The OnePlus 13 feels like a significantly better phone in every way.
Put Axion on it - it's like new then
I was on Pixels since the first generation, and only I recently switched from the Pixel 8 Pro to the OnePlus 15, so I was very late to the game here and missed the peak OnePlus days.
But even so, I've been way happier with the OnePlus than the Pixel. Only thing I miss is the camera quality of the Pixel.
Bummed that I won't have the option next time.
Yeah I recently went to a Find N6 and the battery life is quite literally 40% more than a Pixel. Not to mention the performance is significantly better.
Obviously as a folding phone it's more expensive, but it's leagues ahead of the Pixel Fold as well.
Yep, I went from a OP7T to P6Pro and it did not feel like an upgrade. I still miss the macro camera.
Maybe that's the true cost of these devices, and the discounts we enjoy on other platforms reflect just how much they make selling our data and apps?
Can someone explain the reason? I think I understand the "WHAT". I don't understand the "WHY". Why are they not going to launch new products in US and EU?
Even reading through all the comments above yours I'm still in the dark. Everyone is talking about how they sabotaged their own business, and Carl Pei leaving, but none of that explains why specifically they aren't launching new products in Europe and the US (but still will in other parts of the world?) Something isn't quite adding up here.
Their nitch in the American market was selling high end devices for mid level prices, now that that is no longer the case, most people would rather get a Samsung for performance, a Pixel for it’s cameras or an iPhone for all of the above.
As someone vaguely in the industry: It's because of the huge rise in RAM prices. One of OnePlus' points was high specs at low price. They don't have the margins to eat current RAM prices.
Just a guess, but it probably has to do with their bullshit DMA meant to hobble western tech so they can attempt to compete. I don’t think it’s long before Apple pulls out as well, that DMA has cost them a LOT of money..
Because Carl Pei left and the parent company has 3 other phone brands.
Because their hearts are too heavy and emotional, and their community is too beloved, duh! I really wished companies would just TLDR so you didn't have to read this nonsense every singe time.
It all started when Carl Pie left i suppose. Nothing devices are good but aren't cheap as one plus. They will i guess continue to move in Asia for now i guess.
He was made to leave.
They don't sell well in Asia. It's mainly xiaomi, oppo, vivo and huawei.
OnePlus is owned by Oppo, no?
IIRC it started as an experiment to understand what works in western markets.
It wasn't even an experiment for western markets. It was a small team that convinced leadership to try and sell for the international market. The initial focus was China. And then it became an unexpectedly large international success.
I had a OP1, OP3, OP5 and OP7 pro or something before I switched back to Samsung. In the beginning they were flagship phones being sold for half prices, lately I've even forgotten about them.
Good call. I've got the 8t and it's horrendous. I bought because I kept hearing good things about their earlier models and figured it would translate. It didn't.
Next will be a pixel for sure.
"Never Settle"
Well it's settled then
They settled long, long ago
"Dont be evil"
...to...
"Dont. Be evil"
More like "don't be" for one plus
I remember the hype around the first OnePlus phone, with the invite system. It was the first time I'd had a device loaded with Cyanogenmod that ran relatively stable without any issues. Eventually the capactive touch home button on my OP2 gave out on me but I was a pretty happy user of the OnePlus One, 2, and 3T. I especially liked the removable backplates that had wood options that were pretty neat and felt nice to hold
I suppose Nothing is carrying that torch forward but it's still disappointing to see. Even though most of it was extensions of Oppo tech and ideas into a US/Europe-friendly market position, it still felt like they were innovating and keeping Android ecosystem healthy and interesting beyond simple slab phones.
I was considering looking into a OnePlus phone as my next device for Lineage or Graphene OS, but I guess I'm glad I waited...
What's the real reason for the exit from USA and Europe?
The OnePlus One was exciting because I think it genuinely was an Android-flagship-competitor at a much lower price. Prices crept up though, and the last OnePlus I owned was the 5 which was still pretty excellent!
After a brief, very annoying stint using the Fairphone 4 (underpowered & expensive, though I did actually replace both the battery and the usb c port myself and it was exactly as easy as promised), I'm now finally on a Samsung S25+, though I did really really consider the newest OnePlus.
Sad to know that it won't even be an alternative for my next phone, though hopefully by then, memory/silicon prices will have settled and Nothing will have their own flagship alternatives.
I have a OnePlus Pad 3, bought for about $600, and it's great because it can show books and papers at approximately their real intended sizes.
Absolutely great value for the money.
The only downside is the constant nagging about OS updates.
If this one breaks, I guess it is time to learn Mandarin.
Wait... I have a OnePlus Pad 3. What nagging about OS updates?
Maybe you aren't aware because you always agree to the update popups?
Its a pretty big loss for people who care about bootloader unlocking on devices. even the typically bootloader unlocking friendly companies (this includes oneplus in china at least) restricting bl unlocking, i dont know what happens next neither do i want to find out.
The cameras on the Pro versions used to be so good, then starting around one-plus 9 they really went downhill. I have photos in my archive from my OP8 Pro that look much better than those taken with the OP13.
Coinciding with Samsung nerfing the Ultra (aside from the bloatware) - it's not looking like a great landscape for Android Phones.
Loved my oneplus2, the rest were mediocre at best.
Went from great value hardware with open, minimalist software to overpriced hardware and shitty bloated software.
Great example of how chasing short term wins can bleed you dry over a few years
Man, I flippin loved the OnePlus One. Such a bold device. I still miss that sandstone back all these years later. It made the phone a breeze to hold.
I'm not sure why everyone is so up in arms here. Just means you can't buy one in a store. I've bought a lot of 1+ for myself and family, and not once for a physical or online Australian store. Just for overseas sites. That doesn't change. The 1+ store in AU was only offering models a couple years old, never the latest. So this news changes nothing for me. Still great bang for buck and easily mod-able.
My family and I have been on OnePlus since the beginning, and I just recently got the 15R (which is a beautiful phone, and awesome bang for buck). I've been recycling all my old OnePlus by putting linageOS or AxionOS, and they feel like new again. The alternative Android firmware space is thriving. I just got Android 16 on a Nord N30 5G "Avicii" - it's blazingly fast. Funnily enough, N30 which is close to 6 years old has 12GB of RAM, which is the same as the latest 15R. I'm still a OnePlus flagship killer fanboy
Since they became Oppo in a wig there's really been no reason to buy their products.
Marques Brownlee called this six months ago when he released his video titled "The Downfall of OnePlus will be Studied":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZdbbN3FCzE
I've owned four OnePlus phones, but I've been buying other brands lately.
1. OnePlus became nearly as expensive as flagships but wasn't as good 2. The official software used to be almost-stock Android but they bloated it up 3. The ROM scene came to steadily lag several generations behind phone releases 4. Android/OnePlus ROMs are a worse experience than they used to be (dealing with proprietary camera drivers, SafetyNet) 5. They didn't keep pace when other brands committed to longer OS updates
They used to be a good bargain, a clean OS, and a good modding target if you wanted a ROM anyway.
The first two haven't been true for a while now, and the third became a lot less appealing on OnePlus.
I'm disappointed to see OnePlus go but the brand I loved has been gone for years.
Which other brands have you switched to?
Still running on OnePlus 5. The ideal phone in my opinion.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
“The lawmakers said a recent analysis by a commercial company provided to the committee indicates that these devices may potentially collect and transmit extensive user data -- including sensitive personal information to servers under Chinese jurisdiction without explicit user consent.”
>indicates that these devices may potentially
Translation: they could do that (just like everything else connected to the internet), but they don't? (hence you never heard of that probe again?)
They could do that according to an unspecified "commercial company", as reported in an article titled, "Lawmakers want US Commerce Department to probe Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus".
All my phones for the past 12 years were OnePlus - but I don't buy anything over $450/500. Last few years it seems like everything was $700 or more.
Never good when a highly innovative player disappears. Maybe they lost their northern star when Carl left.
I had heard a lot of good things about their smartwatches and was planning to get one. I guess I will have to import one via Chinese stores now.
Before getting one, make sure you can have Play Store and Wallet on it, if that matters for you.
What a shame, the OnePlus 15 is an excellent phone, especially due to one of the longest battery lives of any I've seen recently, easily lasting 2 days without charging and even acts as a powerbank for reverse charging my wireless earbuds.
I guess I'll have to import Chinese phones now for the US, that's where the innovation is rather than the Apple Samsung duopoly currently present in the US.
Being quirky isn’t innovation…
If you think longer battery life through advances like silicon carbon is "quirky" then I don't know what to tell you.
I don't even feel about this as I think I should feel. I've owned the OnePlus One, 2, 6 and now 12. Since I got it I haven't been fond of the restrictions which I guess piled up over 7-11, particularly the hell I faced when I wanted to update (but am now avoiding any more updates due to the Anti-Rollback Protection thing they're rolling out). It's still a very sturdy and performant device and I don't intend to upgrade for maybe another 8 years, but I'm already looking to move to another brand (NOT Samsung nor Google) when the time inevitably comes.
nothing.tech is the spirtual successor to OnePlus
This is sad. I had a couple of one plus phones. I'm developing an app on one right now, and I told my mom to get one. She had it for eight years, and it's still working. Well, this is the final push, I guess, that I needed to get a Pixel and install GrapheneOS.
I have a OnePlus 3t, a 5, and a Nord N200.
The last model was quite difficult to unlock and reload with LineageOS.
Had that not been the case, this announcement may not have been necessary.
Oh, so I'll finally stop hearing from friends' friends that they have a referral code I can use to get one.
The linked site actually says "North America", which has been incorrectly editorialized to "USA". This is misleading because their announcement appears intended to also cover Canada.
It doesn't really matter for One plus/Oppo/Vivo/Realme/IQOO they all share the same parent BBKE, even they share same OS (at least for some variants), and hardware is very identical across the models, its better they if they reduce it to two sub-brands instead this will atleast reduce consumer's confusion and dilemma while making the purchase.
Posted yesterday (not source): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48923436 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922412
The OnePlus 3 was my first proper smartphone and the best phone I ever used. Running Lineage, it's faster and more responsive, even today, than a $1000 iPhone from 2024. The quality was amazing. It's a shame to have seen their slow decline over the years as they chased expensive and unpopular hardware trends. RIP
I had a OnePlus 3. It was fantastic for the time, but the limited radio bands really hampers it now. The screen is falling off of it and the battery is not what it was, but it's a decade old.
I used it for about 4 years, then my oldest, and then my youngest. Such a great little piece of hardware.
> Running Lineage, it's faster and more responsive, even today, than a $1000 iPhone from 2024
As someone who has both I strongly disagree with that claim, though the 3 and 3T have certainly aged well.
It's the animations. They're really slow on iOS, at least compared to Android with them at 0.5x (or disabled).
This is really noticeable on more recent Chinese devices. Not only we have a +90Hz display, but I believe there's a focus on animation speed because some reviewers over there test how fast it is to open and switch apps. So we end up with something that is smooth and also feels fast.
With animations and transitions disabled, the OnePlus 3 is much faster to navigate through and do the same tasks than an iPhone 16 Pro. And I suspect the touchscreen digitizer is doing less hysteresis / debouncing / 'smart' mapping of presses than an iphone. It really is so much more responsive, it almost boggles my mind
Why none of these Chinese brands doesn't try to set themselves apart, and dare i say innovate by making a true open phone, documented hw, etc, with at least an open version of android, i don't even ask for one of the true Linux OSes.
They innovated in different ways. No other phone comes close to the battery density and charging speed.
The demand for such phones is very low.
You're likely right but i think if you had to fail at least fail for something meaningful. It was crazy thinking it could work anyway, same for makers like Nothing, i feel their fate is written in stone, at least try something really different instead of gimmicks.
Nowhere close to what you asked, but Nothing already seems to be one of the most "open" devices today.
That's for simple fact of having offline/unsigned EDL (Qualcomm's Emergency DownLoad) and files for it getting consistently "leaked". So at least exploratory work on custom ROMs should never leave you with a irrecoverable brick.
Someone in China needs to develop a Mobile OS not Android. Until that happens, they ain’t going anywhere long term and the same applies to personal computers too. Eventually, that has to happen if you wanna get to the next level.
Already happened with HarmonyOS NEXT
I had a OnePlus 6 before switching to iphones. Great device.
But the company was doomed the moment they started raising prices to Samsung levels. Lost any reason to buy them.
Wow. I love my OnePlus 15 and plan to use it as long as I can. I guess it'll be some sort of GrapheneOS setup next.
Lineage as or AxionOS nowadays. Both are excellent and better than stock 1+ OS
LOL, I wondered why their EU store had basically no stock and remaining items (which I may have snagged only yesterday!) were listed at firesale prices.
It has been known for a while that they were going to do this. They have multiple brands and sales aren't strong enough to keep them all.
I preferred OnePlus over Oppo simply because OnePlus phones visually look cleaner, despite likely being from the same design team.
It seems Oppo (and Chinese OEMs in general) are allergic to symmetrical camera bumps.
They were pushing people to OPPO for a long time now its not really a surprise
I usually don't get attached to brands, but this makes me sad.
I bought the OnePlus One in 2015 after Apple killed my iPhone 5's performance and I was told to just buy a new iPhone (this was before they were sued and added a setting to control throttling on "old" batteries). The phone was fast, had more storage than the iPhone, better camera, no bloat (it ran Cyanogen!), had a notification light, felt nice on the hand (sandstone back), and as a nerd, I loved the amount of Android custom ROMs for it. Liked it so much that at one point everyone at home was using OnePlus Ones.
Also had my disappointments. The OnePlus 2 kept overheating (mainly due to the terrible Snapdragon 810), the camera on the OnePlus 3 wasn't as good as their social media posts made me believe, the slow/lack of software updates, etc, but they were cheap devices.
My last OnePlus was the 8 Pro. By the time I gave it away, it was no longer the same old OnePlus. OxygenOS was replaced by ColorOS (even if they kept the old name), which I never really liked, and prices kept increasing even though some of the weaknesses were still there, etc. It was time to move on.
Still have an old OnePlus One "bacon". No longer use it, but during the Covid years I wiped it and installed LineageOS (currently runs LOS 18.1/Android 11 from August 2023). The battery is bad and the display has some discolouration around the edges, but still runs:
- https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2026/oneplus_one_front.jpg
- https://celsoazevedo.com/files/2026/oneplus_one_back.jpg
Wondering what's going on with Canada. I checked out their site yesterday out of curiosity and most products were listed as out of stock.
Is this leading to shutting down OnePlus in a global market? I was an early consumer of OnePlus and how it distrupted the market on those time. Sad to see, they cannot sustained with new innovations and ended up being generic in the current market.
Sad :( I love my OnePlus 13R. The battery life is amazing and the stock skin is close enough to pure Android that it doesn't bother me.
OnePlus One (aka "bacon") changed the industry
HN headline needs a change. It's North America, not just the USA.
The oneplus open (2023) is such a great phone, what a shame
They should make a phone with completely open bootloader. As censorship and surveillance is going to be implemented across the West, that could be a great differentiator from the brands supporting loss of liberty.
Almost 5 billion humans have smartphones - as a species wide achievement its utterly incredible. And yet there are two major manufacturers and not even ten with 100M plus handsets (apple, Samsung, xiaomi, oppo, vivo, huawei)
This is a strategic risk right up there with AI ans starlink - and while we don’t want it to stay this way, it’s even harder to imagine how to fix it.
we are descending into a balkanised world of trade wars and threats. Imagine huawei, or apple being told by their respective governments to turn off security services for phones in europe, for example.
It’s not just an AI arms race.
(My tentative solution is governments start to handout devices that provide NFC digital IDs and start growing from there… but that’s a long way from “as good as apple”
OnePlus had operations in the USA?
This came out of nowhere, I was even considering getting a OnePlus.
so they settled?
I remember when OnePlus marketed themselves as the sort of inexpensive flagship. These past few cycles they've certainly been flagship phones but I don't think there's really been a differentiator.
That's too bad. Had exactly 2 OnePlus devices in the past 8 years.
My current one is a 4 year old Nord 2T still going strong, and in fact K am surprised it still received a recent security update when EOL has been reached.
Time is approaching to switch to a new device. Not sure where to go next. Perhaps I'll wait for the GrapheneOS device.
Nothing.tech is the spiritual successor to OnePlus
It’s been irrelevant in the market for a while now.
I love my OnePlus 9 pro phone. What would be a good replacement?
How about Nothing phones? I'm considering those, when my OP7 will die.
The flagship Nothing phones definitely lean style over performance, but in general I'm happy with the value.
Triple 50mp cameras with the ability to manual focus and control exposure, silicon carbon battery, and fun dot matrix display.
Not quite worth its high price
Pixel 10 Pro, if you are not into games and fast charging is not a priority.
Fairphone 6 maybe? It's on my radar when my Pixel 6a dies
My wife had fair phone 4, and it was unusable. It was only time she replaced a phone prematurely. She cares a lot about camera though, and likes to take pictures. Her main complaint was that the camera took like 5 seconds to start, so she'd miss the moment. And when it did finally start the quality was really bad.
I tried using it a bit but I couldn't stand how unresponsive it was.
I don't know if their later phones have gotten better,I hope so, because I love everything about that company except their (previous) products.
I think Gen6 should be good enough for basically everything from what I read, but I haven't tried one live yet. The other option is a Pixel 9-something once the 11 is out. but I like the e/OS support of the Fairphone and at some point I want to jump ships.
The fairphone 6 is much better! I've found it to be pretty snappy and the screen quality is nice. Can't speak to the camera quality, but the startup time is not slow.
Apple Phones are the best by a huge distance.
Any Pixel from the past few years
RAM prices take down another.
...but why?
I think they lost their direction and at the same time customer appeal. When OpnePlus started it was something new, now I have no reason to choose OnePlus for some time already.
When OnePlus started, they were considerably cheaper than flagship phones from others. At $299, the OnePlus One was a ton less than the $650 you'd pay for an iPhone 6 or Galaxy S5. You were getting a 95% flagship phone at half the price. You could get a OnePlus One with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon or you could get a Samsung with 30% the performance and a 640x480 low-res display for the same price.
I feel like the "something new" was price. Over time, that price kept creeping up. Yes, it went from being a 95% flagship to being a 100% flagship, but it also went from being half price to full price.
It was also cool that it used Cyanogenmod which meant you got a community OS that actually got updates, but over time other manufacturers started offering updates for their phones (rather than abandoning them soon after manufacturing). And that was something new other than price. But I think the big thing was that it was a half-price phone when it launched. In 2014, it was just such an amazing deal. Today, it's the same price as Samsung phones.
I bought many of the first models. They were good and very competitive with price and features. Custom ROMs everywhere. But I guess this is not so true anymore.
It is true. The OnePlus Nord are really good for the price
OnePlus was always a strange proposition to me. I remember debating it with colleagues when the hype started around their first phone. A lot of people and reviewers went crazy over the OnePlus phone, to me it seemed, and still does, as a pretty standard Android phone. The last review I saw was Linus Tech Tips reviewing the latest OnePlus, and Carl Pei commented that maybe Linus issue was that he was used to flagship phones and his expectations was a bit to high.
That really sums it up to me, then OnePlus phones are pretty standard Android phones, they are not really special, at least not to the extend where the brand means all that much to all but a minority of people.
If I had to guess, it's because the phone market is largely dominated by Apple and Samsung, and so it'd be/has been very hard for OnePlus to actually sell their phones there.
Where I'm from OnePlus has actually sold pretty well, competing with price. But then again Finland is one of the most broke countries in EU, so lots of people are price-conscious. Hopefully Oppo will bring some replacement models with equally good price-performance ratio.
I paid 130 euros brand new for my Nord CE 5 with 8GB/128GB configuration. Couldn't be happier with the purchase. All I care is about price/performance ratio and the years of updates promised.
Finland is not one of the most broke countries in the EU...
We have the highest unemployment rate in EU, and fast growing public debt (7th highest right now). Trust me, ordinary people here are quite broke after we consider the living expenses.
It's expected that in 4 years our debt to GDP ratio will reach that of Spain right now. And Spain's ratio is decreasing. We'll be right there with Greece, Italy and France soon enough, and I doubt unemployment will get any better.
There are minor Android players who seem to be standing their ground, so something has to be different here. Nothing, Xiaomi/Redmi, Motorola
> minor Android players ... Xiaomi
Xiaomi appears to be the 3rd largest smartphone manufacturer in the world (behind Samsung and Apple). Not sure I'd call them a "minor player"
RAMageddon ?
>As part of the proactive global strategy adjustment, OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America.
So.. they will roll out new products, conclusively? They will sell the same new products globally, including in Europe and North America? They will.. stop selling new phones because they can't form an intelligible sentence? That's the one.
If you're going to be pedantic, at least first check you're correct.
Conclude - verb - to bring to an end.
I'm not being pedantic, I'm saying their word salad is hard to read. As demonstrated by half of the messages in here arguing about what actually happened and whether the headline is correct.
It's not hard to say "We will not launch new models of OnePlus phones in Europe and NA. Current models will remain on sale, will still be supported and your warrantee is unchanged."
A pedant might say that telling people to use simpler words is the opposite of being "ostentatiously scholarly".
I probably shouldn't even engage, so hopefully this doesn't come across as too patronising.
If you're genuinely confused about the statement in question, let's break it down.
> OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America
Replace "to conclude" with the definition "to bring to an end". This becomes:
> OnePlus has decided to bring to an end new product rollouts in Europe and North America
That is a very clear message, that there will be no new products released in Europe and North America.
The arguments about the headline elsewhere in this comment section is because the HN headline doesn't reflect that clear message. The HN headline says "halts operations", which implies an immediate end of support.
Good. I have a OnePlus 8t and it's the worst phone I've ever owned. I've hated it since day one, but I'd feel bad replacing a new phone, so I've kept it all these years anyway. It's now old enough for me to consider a replacement (finally!). This announcement doesn't really change anything for me, I'd never buy OnePlus again anyway, but at least it keeps others from making the same mistake I did.
They seem to have a lot of goodwill from customers. I'll never understand why.
Written from my OnePlus 8t.
I think the t is for "trash"
Did I miss something, or did you not list any reasons why you do not like the phone? They have a lot of good will from customers because they like their phones...
(great screens, high refresh rate, great photos with a much lighter touch of automatic processing compared to Samsung, awesome physical switch, excellent battery life, fast charging.)
The issues are legion. First thing I noticed was the addition of bloat. The "stock android"was a main selling point for me, but I do not feel they delivered. The ultra fast charging has been nice on occasion, but I think it's done more harm than good: the battery deteriorated faster than any phone I've had before it. I've had lots of issues with the usb-c port, it keeps spitting out cables, occasionally doesn't connect properly. The behind-the-screen fingerprint reader is a really cool feature, unfortunately it's so unreliable I've stopped using it completely since it's faster to use the pin code than doing 8 scans of my finger. Lately the power button has stopped working which is super annoying, if I run out of batteries my phone is dead until an alarm rings, which turns it on again. The sound slider is a cool idea, unfortunately it interacts weirdly with several apps. The worst of which is it opens "find in page"in my web browser any time I touch it. Oh and it became loose and occasionally switches on its own, but that's wear and tear I guess... There is so much wrong with this phone...
And these were issues you had with the phone on day one?
The loose sound switch and broken power button came later, but the rest was day one.
Some unsolicited life advice: don’t feel bad about getting rid of stuff that you don’t like (or in the words of Marie Kondo, doesn’t “spark joy”).
If you had sold that phone to someone else it wouldn’t be wasted. Someone else would have continued to use it.
I don’t claim to know your financial situation but it probably would have been worth the loss.
Problem isn't throwing away the old phone, it's getting a new one. I was like this with the iPhone 6. I don't really care and just need a phone that works, but separately, the 6 was the worst iPhone ever cause of batterygate.
I've had a few OnePlus phones - currently a Nord 4 - and have always found them good value for money. Early OnePluses (I think I had a 2 or 3 originally) were incredible value. Also, very fast charging and almost stock Android are lovely features.
I don't understand why you don't like them, because you haven't said!
Yeah I've also heard good things about their early devices, which was why I got this one. Maybe they used to be good? As of the 8t, they definitely weren't good anymore though