What Happened to OnePlus?

[Music] hey what's up mkbhd here welcome to 2021 so this is the oneplus one and this is the oneplus 8 pro and the oneplus story is a really fascinating one so when people ask me like in real life hey what phone do you use and i say it's a oneplus 8 pro the phone i use is called the oneplus 8 pro the reaction is always one of two things they either draw a total blank and they have never heard of oneplus and they have to be filled in on what oneplus is or they already know about it and they pull one out of their pocket too and now maybe they already saw the reviews and they love the thing it's actually gotten to the point where it's become a defining characteristic of the oneplus brand it's a really popular enthusiast smartphone brand where people really know about it in the community already but in the outside world they're still trying to break into this mainstream where everyone's heard of them but there's a really great quote from the dark knight you might heard about it where you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain and loki that's kind of slowly what's been happening to oneplus over the past couple years let me explain so from the beginning and this is an important fact to sort of keep in the back of your head for all this oneplus is a brand owned and managed by a company called bbk electronics and that company also runs the brands for oppo vivo and realme so while all these companies are sort of viewed as independent and they're independently managed and run they're also kind of related like brothers so anyway okay the oneplus story starts pretty hot right they're the new kid on the block they're a fresh face and their first phone is a pretty massive success it's a the oneplus one and this phone especially in the enthusiast community catches on instantly you know they can barely keep up with orders they have this wild invite only purchase system to get your hands on it and the phone is hard to get right off the bat and the reason that this phone is such a massive success is because it's positioned perfectly as maybe the original flagship killer so it's coming from a new upstart company that's not spending millions on marketing they're really listening to comments and their forums and they're delivering features enthusiasts really want and they have an incredible price to performance ratio they partnered with cyanogenmod for the software for a custom near stock android experience it was like a souped-up version of the nexus 5. they didn't cut corners with specs and performance and they added features with software updates and they were active within their community and it all comes from this young hungry upstart that kind of feels like a startup that was the kind of energy i could get behind i really liked this phone when it came out and i feel like if you're putting together a list of like the best phones of the last decade i think this has to be on it so oneplus as a company starts building up from that right and there's a few botched marketing campaigns here and there i suspect just from them not really being very familiar with this new market they're working with but very quickly they've broken in and they just carve out this identity as being the new enthusiast phone with bang for the buck but remember remember that fact i told you to keep in mind from the beginning of the video oneplus is a new company but they're not exactly a new company remember they're a sub brand alongside vivo and oppo and realme so while a lot of their phones and their startup style management is really fun if you've paid attention over the past couple years to some of their designs and even their oldest stuff a lot of oneplus phones are also oppo phones it goes all the way back to that oneplus one came out around the same time as the oppo find seven two different phones from two different companies but related companies so the hardware shares a lot of parts and most of the substantial difference is in the software since oppo is targeting one market and oneplus is targeting another same idea with the oneplus 5 and the oppo are 11. i mean put them side by side and tell me without the logo you could tell these apart a little bit after that there was oneplus 6t that looked a lot like oppo r17 and even today you have oneplus new nord n100 which is visually almost indistinguishable from oppo's a53 and even some oppo technologies like luke charging get rebranded and included in oneplus phones as dash charging now none of this is a bad thing so how do i bring this up well the oneplus brand has been evolving right in front of our eyes clearly they started off this company that was very focused with one phone per year bringing the hype with the maximum value for the lowest price and diving deep into enthusiast features and listening to users and forums and on social media all of that but that isn't sustainable by itself the enthusiast market is a tiny fraction of the entire market and so while being the enthusiast favorite is great they definitely want to leverage that status to be able to sell to the whole rest of the market and so we've seen lots of attempts at that over the years first of all their flagship pricing as you've seen has slowly crept up year over year so the oneplus one started at 299 when it first came out flagship killer status and it's slowly bumped up over the years to now oneplus 8 pro starts at 8.99 so they have those early phones starting with one plus one one plus two one plus three but they also tried phones like the oneplus x which were more fashion focused they started dropping more phones per year with a t version and a pro versus non-pro version and their latest attempt the nord which has turned into a full-blown line of budget phones in different regions for different low prices now to the enthusiast this may seem disappointing like they aren't as focused as they once were with this one hard-hitting phone per year to slay the giants as they now go chasing the mainstream and so there's this pretty new narrative playing out in headlines and comments that oneplus is sort of turning into oppo with all these new phones that are coming out but if you've been paying attention then you already know oneplus has been taking pages from oppo's playbook since the very beginning and both companies along with pretty much every other major smartphone company wants to sell eventually to as many people as possible so there's a really great video by fellow youtuber tech alter i've recommended it before it's an oldie but a gay but you should watch it on the theory of enthusiast brands and basically his theory is there's almost no way that an enthusiast brand doesn't eventually disappoint you because there's only two ways their future can go either they will move on from enthusiasts and try to eventually sell to the rest of the world the mainstream buyer which is a little disappointing or they continue to try to appeal to the most fickle crowd in the world that is also the smallest and eventually find that that's not good enough to sustain a business and they die and that's also pretty disappointing so the moral of the story today is don't be a fanboy meaning don't become such a fan of a company that they can eventually betray you and let you down be a fan of the products themselves so if a company you like drops a bad product maybe it's time to consider other options it sounds super simple because it is but a lot of people don't have quite the same luxury people working at oneplus for example probably feel differently about the company they work for today than when they started especially if they've been working for the company for a long time matter of fact many people from that company's early days have left so the oneplus story has been pretty crazy you know on one hand it is pretty unusual to see i mean it's pretty rare and actually kind of refreshing that you see a new brand or a fresh face sort of break in and disrupt things and shake it up a little bit but on the other hand you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain now this isn't to say oneplus is like done and they'll never make another good phone again and they're going to become evil no i actually think they've sort of created a dna that will allow them to probably keep making a lot of really good phones phones that i continue to use and like i'm sure that'll keep happening but i think if you're looking for the best bang for the buck or even the the most enthusiast focused smartphone brand well that's new shoes to be filled that's going to be a sort of a rotating spot at the moment seems to be a lot of red me a lot of poco and probably some new brands coming up will be in there too so either way that's been it thanks for watching and uh let me know if you guys enjoy these sort of explainer videos like this i had a lot of fun with them so hopefully you do too anyway catch you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 5,113,402

Keywords: OnePlus, OnePlus Nord, OnePlus prices, MKBHD, happened to OnePlus, what happened to OnePlus

Id: 9EOAEWC9hJ4

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lewlkewl]

I totally agree with his overall point. Fanboyism will ultimately always disappoint. It happens in every industry, wether it be movies, gaming, or tech. People should like what they like and not worship at the altar of companies/artists.

[u/FreemanCantJump]

Marques flexing the phone drawer 👀

[u/Important_Image]

He didn't go over how their software/software support is changing as well as a result which I think it's also a very important thing to note.

[u/[deleted]]

i hope google comes in and takes its place but i highly doubt we'll ever get a brand as "flagship killer" minded as oneplus (2014 to 2018)

[u/tibbity]

Oppo is eating up OnePlus alive. It's visible with the direction OnePlus has taken, from the Nord series to that newz entry-level fitness tracker - all of which are very out of place for a company that focuses on the high-end.

Tldr: Oppo is using the OnePlus brand name to sell its crap.

[u/E06SP]

Good reminder that companies don't care about their fans or (current) customers, they're trying to make profit as much as they can

Look at the amount of updated OnePlus devices get, or lack thereof

[u/Suikerspin_Ei]

Appreciate a product, don't be a fanboy of a brand :) Brands can't use the same strategy for ever with selling flagship killers. Eventually they need to make more money for growing as a company. Unless they money via other ways, like ads in their UI or apps.

[u/12apeKictimVreator]

1+'s only relevance was being a cheaper high-performing phone.

now that even Apple has joined the $400 range not to mention so many other brands, 1+ is in trouble. you can get the latest SoC for $400-600 from either brand.

[u/the_ali_]

A lot of people are taking a jab at OnePlus fans saying it was bound to happen. But if people spend time on their forums what actually disappoints is the the fact how OnePlus treats their devices. Last year the 7 series was constantly behind in security updates, updates that were bug ridden, and then you wait for 2-3 months for the next update and then that update is an old one. Is that how a year old flagship gets updates? Then there's the support, I have a faulty unit and because of covid I had to move out of the US and OnePlus straight up told me they won't help me. Then there's OOS 11. For the 8 series it was chuck full of bugs, the Nord N series will only get that and then the 7 series roadmap is as vague as can be. Hell Samsung's note10 already started getting it and it released with android 9, the OnePlus 7t released with android 10 and still haven't gotten it ( yes I am aware of the chip issues, but how did the s10 lite get it with the same chip as the 7 pro?) The gripe OnePlus users have is that they release more devices than they can actively and properly support. Samsung is stepping up their game, now isn't the time for OnePlus to settle, they're alienating devoted users before they've gotten mainstream popularity

Edit: remember optimized charging for the 7 series? On the stable build I mean. Yeah that's basically the update story