FRESH
Hacker News
Hacker News Hacker NewsThe 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 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...
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
Well it's settled then
Coinciding with Samsung nerfing the Ultra (aside from the bloatware) - it's not looking like a great landscape for Android Phones.
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
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.
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.”
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 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.
But the company was doomed the moment they started raising prices to Samsung levels. Lost any reason to buy them.
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:
It seems Oppo (and Chinese OEMs in general) are allergic to symmetrical camera bumps.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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"
