Previously on Lemmy: Motorola
Maybe we should just make this a series now.
Never settle for Oneplus.
I’ve always felt that Oneplus is a brand that I should like on principle of having clean software with barebones but powerful hardware, but in reality, every single Oneplus phone I’ve seen always had some sort of big BUTs attached to them, so buying Oneplus always feels like settling.
Take the Oneplus One for example, that sandstone textured cover was THE most creative material I felt a phone could have had, and I’m honestly shocked nobody has ever done it again. But along with that of course, comes with the cringy “smash your phone” marketing campaign, the half-hearted attempt to distance themselves from their parent company Oppo, the whole software mess with CyanogenMod/OxygenOS, etc.
Had a Oneplus 3T for a while, same deal: Great phone when it works as intended, but they raised their price without making the phone better, and the inexplicable random restarts/battery drain is so irritating, never had another phone that does that.
Recently they’ve dropped all pretense of not being Oppo and abandoned their core audience, choosing to have the “courage” to drop the headphone jack. Mediocre Chinese phones with flagship specs are a dime a dozen, I just don’t see a reason to buy them anymore.
Do you have a problem that they’re “just Oppo” now? I bought an Oppo phone on a bit of a whim when my last phone died and I’m a bit of a convert. The software is great - clean, unobtrusive and full of useful features, the weird features can be disabled. I even switched from Nova back to the default Oppo launcher and it’s fine, certainly not as configurable and I don’t like how the inbuilt search recommends store apps, but it’s perfectly cromulent.
Given my experience with Oppo I’d have no qualms about choosing Oppo or OnePlus as my next phone. RealMe, BBK’s other brand, I’d need to research first as their value proposition seems even more insane than Oppo…
I don’t have a problem with them being Oppo, Oppo makes good products. (BTW, I’m still mad Oppo NA shut down so there’s nowhere to get a new HA-2SE or PM-1 now) What I have a problem with is that 1+ was trying so hard to pretend to NOT be Oppo at first.
I just moved away from my 7T onto a Pixel 7. I love my 7T. It was definitely my favorite phone. But it seems like things have changed lately and the newer OnePlus phones aren’t what they used to be. I still use my 7T as a game and media player for when I’m chilling in bed.
Fully agree. I still have my 7T Pro, and I’m not looking forward to upgrading it when I have to! I loved when it was a simple upgrade on base android, but with the newer versions, it has veered away from that. I’m disappointed with the updates - I haven’t done the latest update as lots of people are complaining that it’s very buggy, and it doesn’t look like they are going to update it again.
I don’t think I’d go for a OnePlus again - I’d probably go with something more stock, with hopefully more reliable updates, like a Pixel.
Great thread. I’m currently on a OP8 and it’s done me alright, but my screen broke a few months ago so I’m gonna hijack this thread to ask for The Best Phone on the market under 1k right now. Ideally cheap (and rootable).
They used to be great value, good specs for affordable prices, then slowly turned into premium shit when they got more popular. Same happening with Nothing now.
Exactly that, they were great until 4 or 5, I think. Then they became premium. It’s kinda a version of enshittifcation for hardware makers: Pander to enthusiast community at the start, get some marketshare and mindshare, then go premium and raise prices, abandoning the original group of fans.
I currently have a 7T. It’s not bad. Felt pretty impressive at the time that I got it. These days I feel like the camera is a bit lacklustre and every now and then something freezes. I’m gonna upgrade to something else soon. Probably something much higher end as I’m more comfortable spending money on a high end phone these days. But it’s been a pretty solid phone, especially for its price and age.
Used to be high spec and a low price. Now they’re average spec and an above-average price.
Nowadays phones are all pretty similar in price and spec, so I’d rather get a slightly more expensive phone from a company with proven, accessible warranty.
I don’t like them. I think they are trying to be Apple and I hate that because it means higher prices, fewer features. No headphone jack, no SD card slot, no dual SIM, high prices.
That’s not meant to be the Android way. Android is all about choice and options. That’s what I love about Sony, and why I have a Sony Xperia 10iii - they give you more: award winning design, sleek form factor, fantastic cameras, headphone jack, SD card slot, dual SIM, waterproofing, easily removable SIM tray, notification LED, battery care, long battery life, great OLED screen, NFC, HiRes audio on wired and wireless, MP3 upscale to improve music quality on MP3 tracks, great video recording (up to 4K on mine), support app built in, fast stock launcher will little bloat. I’m even a fan of the dedication Google Assistant button and use it all the time.
And the price was great because I got it on sale for just €350.
That’s how Android should be: options, choice, value for money
Edit: I forgot to mention that Sony allows unlocking the bootloader if you want to install other ROM’s like Sailfish, Lineage etc
We’ll do Sony some other time. Promise.
Ditto on that lol. I have the oneplus 11. Bought it right when it came out.
The camera is pretty good. I actually like the in screen fingerprint sensor. The rest of the phone is pretty trash. The UI changes they did feel, wrong. I don’t even know how to describe it. My unihertz looks better.
The biggest sin of oneplus tho, is nearly unfunctional bluetooth. It’s constantly dropping out on me. Android auto doesn’t work half the time. I used it for about 3 months and went back to my sony
I was considering them until they removed expansion storage on their phones.
I had a OnePlus 3T that lasted me 4 years. It served me well and I liked the design on hardware and software, but my biggest complaint was their way too overly aggressive killing of background apps. I remember numerous times where I would be listening to music and if I switched to another app it would kill my music after a few minutes. I guess it helped on battery benchmarks but the usability really suffered.
And by the time I was ready to get a new phone, they were just as expensive as everyone else without a clear vision or distinction to set them apart. I had also heard too many support issues to feel comfortable spending that much on a phone compared to the other options, so they ended up losing me as a repeat customer.
I remember being so excited after getting my 3T to introduce people to OnePlus as a great performance/software/price combo since they still weren’t that well-known outside of enthusiast communities at the time, and I was disappointed to see the direction they’ve ended up going.I’m having a similar experience with my Realme x3 which I believe shares a lot of software with the OnePlus.
I need Facebook messenger for my work, and no matter what I do - even using LADB to uninstall Athena etc - it still gets killed randomly.
Only solution for now is to run Messenger Lite, which is also broken in that all links sent to it come up as attachment unavailable.
A shame as it’s a great phone otherwise.
Have a Oneplus 7 Pro, first Oneplus phone I’ve owned and it will be the last. Absolutely love the phone itself, but Oneplus as a company, the software they package, the warranty issues, and the direction they’ve gone as a value pick have all fallen off a cliff since it was produced, and have turned me off to ever upgrading to one of their newer models. That’s fine for me though, I have replacement parts on-hand, and a third-party actually maintained rom, so I’m OP7P until the wheels fall off this thing.
Edit: Can’t comment with experience on other OP phones, but I’ve heard very good things about the 6s, it was my second pick when I was looking for a phone at the time.
I am only slightly better than a “casual” user in terms of Android phones. The most I’ve done is flash LineageOS on my phone. I think smartphones have reached the pinnacle for users like me. Like TVs I’m really wondering where smartphones could possibly go from here. As long as all the apps work and the battery can last a full working day I don’t think I’ll be replacing my 8T any time soon.
If there’s one thing I’d be looking for it would be Android’s answer to iMessage. But that ball is in Google’s court. Ideally it would be an open protocol, preferably they would just adopt something that already exists, like Matrix Chat.
Android has an answer. It’s RCS chat and it works pretty good. Apple refuses to implement it.
Matrix does seem to be the way forward, but last time I used Element it was absurdly slow, so I don’t think it’s ready yet.
I’m typing this from a 6t. No complaints with it so far, it’s far enough in that I need to replace the battery but that’s to be expected. The 6gb of ram has proved to be really helpful in ensuring that things always work and the dual sim has let me combine the work and personal phones into one.
I know it’s long in the tooth so if anyone has some recommendations for a replacement that has dual sim and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg please reply!
Maybe wait for the Zenfone 10?
Thanks, I’ll keep an eye on it.
The Oneplus 7 series was the last one that seemed good. Newer models have worse cameras somehow too.
After having a Samsung Galaxy S since the beginning every one got worse until I switched from the S7 to a oneplus 7 pro.
This is been, hands down, the best phone I’ve ever owned. So far it has also lasted longer than any phone.
I’m disheartened to hear that I don’t have new ones to look forward to when it comes time to replace this one.
I suppose I’ll just go with the pixel # pro whenever it comes time. My wife and daughter like theirs.
They had their time in the sun. Their first few phones were pretty good in terms of price to performance. 7 Pro were peak One Plus.
Every phone after that just got more and more bland with hardly any feature to make them stand out from the rest of the competition.
I had a OnePlus 6T and a OnePlus 8T.
OnePlus 6T: had it for 1.5 years and sold it because it had some weird bugs (can’t remember exactly which).
OnePlus 8T: had it for almost 2 years. Updated to Android 12, was shit after few weeks. Factory reset to 11, used that a long time. Updated to 12 for a a few days and then to Android 13. Was alright but again a few bugs. Factory reset it again a few (staying on Android 13). Later Factory reset it to Android 11.
I have factory reset it 5 times in 1 the last year i had the OnePlus 8T.
And despite the many factory resets, every few days had a bug where it became so slow it wasn’t useable anymore and had to reboot.
Short story: OnePlus had a lot of potential and I bought a OnePlus 6T for the price and the good software support they had in 2018. I feel a little betrayed because they became so worse over the few years I had my OnePlus phones.
I now have a Samsung S23 Ultra which has good software support and yes it has some bloat. But i don’t have stupid bugs and the phone stays fast.
