Comment by rock_artist
11 hours ago
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
[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.
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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.
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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?