On 04/20/2015 05:24 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
I've been intensely phone shopping for a little while, and have been as unimpressed with the company as I have been impressed with the phone. Despite a really good piece of launch hardware, there are some substantial flaws in the phone but even more -- and far worse -- with the company.
GTALUGgers (and others) trying to buy the phone in 2015 may have noticed that OnePlus, without warning or explanation, stopped shipping to Canada, and only started again last week. The company was not at all forthcoming in any rationale and offered nothing but cheery weeks-long promises of Real Soon Now.
After researching on the forums, it appears to me that the company had lied about the phone's value (declaring them at $99) which eventually got shipments red-flagged by Canada customs.
I paid HST on the full price of the phone when I got it in January.
This, in combination with the historically miserable service and extra fees of DHL (the only Canadian shipping option) led to indefinite suspension of Canadian shipping of the OnePlus. Things re-opened this week, with UPS as the courier and taxes pre-collected at purchase time.
Canada Post was another option but I didn't take it because there didn't seem to be any way of tracking the shipment and I didn't want to take the chance of the shipment getting "lost" along the way. Even with the DHL fees, this phone was still great value for money.
But that's not the worst of it IMO. The company was caught completely flat-footed when Cyanogen went commercial, pulled the rug out from OnePlus, and signed an exclusive deal in India with a competing handset maker. This has thrown software efforts into a panic as OnePlus now unexpectedly finds itself having to rush-release its own Android mutation, OxygenOS. So now the the OnePlus software support, once thought of as super stable, is not. Those who have lots of time on their hands researching and installing ROMs should be OK, the mainstream will suffer through this transition as we witness one more Android fragmentation. Whoever is in charge of OnePlus's corporate partnerships should be long fired by now, yet no such penance is in hand.
This has been a non-issue for me. I don't see any compelling reason for me to move away from the installed Cyanogen to OxygenOS. The phone does everything I expect of it and more so I'm blissfully ignorant of what I might be missing.
And then you have a number of production and marketing choices that seem just insane. The OnePlus is the only phone in its field that claims to be a "global" phone, yet lacks LTE Band 20 which is critical for Europe. Its wifi doesn't do 802.11ac.
Both non-issues for me, though it would be if I travelled to Europe.
The invite system has longer overstayed its novelty.
This was the reason that kept me from buying one for months until I finally gave up resisting it and jumped through the hoops to get an invite. As much as the invite system was touted as "innovative", it wasn't. It was just an annoyance and added friction to the purchasing process, neither of which are great things if you want to maximize sales.
And you can't buy one in Australia or Switzerland or Brazil at any price. Their e-commerce capabilities are weaker than those of hawkers of dollar gadgets on eBay.
Add to this the fact that the field of "near-flagship-features-at-midrange-prices" smartphones is about to get very crowded, and some of the other vendors have the benefit of retail access (instant availability) and local warranty support. Within the next month or two, don't consider the OnePlus without also having a look at the Asus Zenfone 2 with 4GB RAM, the Huawei P8 and the 2nd-generation Moto G. More intrepid shoppers will find even greater choice from domestic Chinese vendors such as Xiaomi and LeTV.
Being a WIND Mobile customer has its challenges, the biggest being that I can't buy any phone and expect it to work on their network. It's very time-consuming to dig up information on whether a given phone will work on that network or not, especially for phones from the myriad of domestic Chinese vendors. This has been an amazing phone but I don't have much to compare it to. I let a friend who was interested in it play with it and he was amazed at how responsive it is. The only concern I have about it is how repairable it would be in the event of screen breakage or other damage. My son put his HTC One M7 through the wash in his jeans and took it in to get it repaired. Three repair shops told him the same thing, "Those phones are not repairable because of the way they're assembled." I just read that the M9 received the lowest rating possible for repairability. I'd rather not treat these as disposable devices, though that seems to be the direction all smart phones are going. I have no idea how repairable the OPO is so that is something I will be looking for the next time I buy a phone. -- Regards, Clifford Ilkay +1 647-778-8696