OnePlus halts operations in USA and Europe
community.oneplus.com
community.oneplus.com
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.
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)
* 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
Good phone. I was worried about that pop up camera failing at some point, but it never did
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.
The battery has weakened ofc, the 2 day battery life has dropped to a measly 9 hours, but that's more than enough.
# pun intended
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.
How did we get here?
Which is 30% less than the original iPhone accounting for inflation.
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, salaries have not kept up with inflation
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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.
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.
OnePlus starting out: "We’re going to build the ultimate, cheap, bloatware-free phone directly for tech nerds by cutting out carriers, ads, and useless features."
OnePlus scaling up: "Nerds don't buy enough phones to keep us alive, and they'll leave the second someone else is $10 cheaper. We have to sell to normal people."
OnePlus today: To survive, they had to raise prices, buy ads, partner with carriers, and merge with a generic parent company.
Then I saw the announcement that they'll be merging the bloatware Chinese version of their OS and that was the last day I held my OnePlus phone.
Had they not taken that path, I'd likely have bought at least 3 of their phones since then.
25% and rising market share, wonderful extension ecosystem.
Nope, gotta copy Chrome. With expected results.
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.
There used to be BBK Electronics that owned both, but it split up and OnePlus got placed under 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
My Nord 2T battery is still perfectly fine after 4 years.
I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Having said that, my Nokia E71 and Communicator batteries are still usable after 20+ years.
I think they could easily argue successfully that post-sale software updates were always contingent on continuing operation of the company.
Q: When will the communityus.oneplus.com close?
A: The communityus.oneplus.com will close on 11:59PM ET,August 16, 2026.
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?
Prices usually get ok halfway the cycle, though this year not as much due to the RAM/SSD squeeze.
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.
Dropped animations, slow downs in the summer due to heat, poor battery life because it has to use boost, and so on. You don't have to game to notice it.
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 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'm hoping the Moto GrapheneOS phones will be solid. They will be my new primary option if so.
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).
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.
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.
I wasn't really risking being denied, as long as I didn't break any rules.
Did you have a $3000 phone?
> Replacing something for free is surely better than doing so for $300 dollars, no?
And having a phone you like more is surely better than having to return your phone and buy a different one, no?
It's a tradeoff. If they can even legally touch your warranty to begin with.
Funnily enough, no. When I read that comment, I didn't even know that phones can go for such a price. But, apparently some triple folding phones do.
I read that as a "buy a budget phone and use it until it's gone, don't buy an expensive phone," which to be fair was exactly what I was doing up until this point.
> And having a phone you like more is surely better than having to return your phone and buy a different one, no?
Yes. But I do include functionality when evaluating how much I like a phone. I liked the phone at first, but then the issues moved it to a dislike. Considering I only had it for a week, what further issues awaited? I didn't want to risk that.
Searching for a different phone sucks, but at least I get my money back.
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.
Today I'd go for the Bothing 4a/4a Pro.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/23803460/nothing-phone-2-verizon-wo...
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?
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".
For the past years OnePlus wasn't much more than a sub-brand for slightly redesigned Oppo devices anyway...
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.
... and delivered?
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?
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.
Or do you think literally every such piece of paper has identical importance and priority?
Many sources including government sources like to pretend that the president must sign a bill into law but it is not the case. Most of how the "news" reports on this stuff is purely political and has no connection to reality.
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?
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.
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?
The sinkhole thing is a really long story, and a lot of it is that my boss is an old, eccentric, PhD who has zeroed in on this.
LaGuardia has sinkholes because it's built on a crazy substructure of rotting wooden pilings and metal framework.
We don't expect them to pay us, my boss (remember, 70 year old Kiwi) thinks you can just call airports up and get on the runway. To be entirely fair, if a sinkhole opened up at Invercargill airport, we could be on the runway tomorrow, and probably next week at Christchurch. He just doesn't realize that NYC is not the South Island.
8,600,000: Population of New York City (where LaGuardia is)
1,250,000: Population of New Zealand's South Island (where Christchurch is)
5,400,000: Population of New Zealand
I live in Australia and Australia is not New Zealand... but this sounds exactly like what would happen in rural Australia - people in small towns still do handshake deals because you know and trust most people in town.
Not related to business deals but a family member was flying rurally in Australia maybe 15 years ago and joked about stabbing the pilot with a 4cm nail file. The airport security guy had a good laugh too.
Unrelated but Finnair's requirements for flying with doctoral swords are wonderful.
Similarly, a friend who works in engineering went to tender to a country council. Working for a big city firm they had no expectation of getting the job because they were up against a company from another nearby country town. Got to try and tender in case the shoe-in company really blows it, but no expectation of actually getting the job.
The scene was Tokyo Disneyland at the time of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Shelter in place was a requirements, and there were school age and younger children who took refuge in a gift shop. As a help to keep the youngest children comforted through a scary time, the staff there took the initiative and let the children hold stuffed anials from the gift shop inventory.
Now, think about this from the US Disney Corp. viewpoint. They did what?? They gave away what amounted to pretty much the entire inventory of stuffed characters?
How fast would the manager taking that action be 'unhired' at L.A. or Florida?
But, this was Japan and things are different.
The managers have a cultural standard of hospitality and responsibility of care, even though this is a Retail Location, these children and parents are still guests in the venue.
The children and their parents also knew that these weren't "gifts" from Disney, but, without getting explicit or formal assent at the time of handing them out, everyone just understood that when the shelter in place period ended, the stuffed characters were to be returned.
Staff didn't even have to ask for them back, and the parents had managed childrens' expectations to prevent meltdowns when that happened.
All the children who needed some extra comforting in a stressful situation had a favorite character, and the Retail Location lost exactly zero product.
I could go on with many other intrinsic differences, but this one is a pretty clear example.
So, the US business realities neither were necessary nor appropriate in that situation.
Why stay there even ONE week, unless you were very senior?
You can sustain a month of 996 if your project is under fire (it may happen in a startup). But more than that is unsustainable: you have less social life and get more tired. Which means that you get more irritable, make more mistakes, eat more calories, and have more chances of depression or burnout. There is nothing heroic or productive about 996
Someone had an opinion calling something cool and I am not allowed to have an opinion questioning said coolness?
You do realise this is a discussion board right?
The fapiao system has improved but still exists unfortunately.
I remember back when I lived in China some of my flatmates slept in work overnight since it was encouraged, you save time on commuting.
I worked also on OP project which was handled separately from O/Rm and V/IQ, but I find in general approach of these companies very amateurish when it comes down to providing reference materials, though it could be even worse, unnamed company selling mostly in India is disaster, now they use AI to localize their phones, you are suppose to check it with no screenshots, no description, so clearly can't even check it properly, so apparently AI is doing fine since you can't really report worries anyway. And if you will drive EV from the biggest CN EV company expect same, they are not better.
The most professional are H/H and X, no complaints there. They are at Nokia level professionalism from back in the days.
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
[3] https://nothing.community/d/6047-policies-for-rootingunlocki...
(And seem to be doing so successfully - certainly, you see a lot more Nothings than OnePluses in London)
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.
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).
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.
It would have made much more sense to kill those other brands in the West and unify everything under the OnePlus banner.
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.
Realme is literally an ID verification system and a terrible choice for a brand.
Also I think the iPhone and MacBook brands are much stronger than Apple itself.
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 is nice to have a lot of competition for phones.
The contraction of the US market and lots of government interference with tariffs is not good.
I also think of Essential and Poco when this kind of thing comes up.
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...
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.
Written on a OnePlus 8 Pro.
Now I want rid of the pixel because they destroyed battery life with an update in march they've still not fixed.
only gripes I have are mapping apps are slow to initialize. i don't drive uber tho, so it's not terribly inconvenient
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.
Practically all banking apps are supported, and they have a thorough list so you can check beforehand.
What's the alternative to Google Wallet for tap to pay and loyalty cards?
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.
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.
Obviously as a folding phone it's more expensive, but it's leagues ahead of the Pixel Fold as well.
As it is, it’s just a rant not a contribution to dialog.
There is so much wrong with this phone...
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.
I usually use the pointy end of a plastic flosser.
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.
IIRC it started as an experiment to understand what works in western markets.
Well it's settled then
...to...
"Dont. Be evil"
Next will be a pixel for sure.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
“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.”
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?)
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.
OnePlus have been developer-unfriendly for a while and alienated their most loyal customers.
I still think their phones provide best bang for the buck performance- even at $700-800 considering the current smartphone market. My last three phones were OnePlus 7T, 8, and 12R. I was looking forward to 15R, but got a Razr Ultra instead since they a made the announcement.
Coinciding with Samsung nerfing the Ultra (aside from the bloatware) - it's not looking like a great landscape for Android Phones.
My OnePlus Pro 9 felt like a good step up in photo quality.
And my OnePlus 12 takes awesome photos I'm very happy with. I didn't experience the same "downhill" as you.
As someone who has both I strongly disagree with that claim, though the 3 and 3T have certainly aged well.
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.
I used it for about 4 years, then my oldest, and then my youngest. Such a great little piece of hardware.
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.
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.
It seems Oppo (and Chinese OEMs in general) are allergic to symmetrical camera bumps.
Hard to see them leave these markets.
On the other hand, they already have a huge market to focus with around 3 billion smartphone users.
But the company was doomed the moment they started raising prices to Samsung levels. Lost any reason to buy them.
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
those who still love their phones can still get most of the way there by using an equivalent oppo phone and tweak some software.
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:
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.
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”
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Conclude - verb - to bring to an end.
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".
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.
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"
I don't understand why you don't like them, because you haven't said!
(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.)
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.