Category Archives: OnePlus

Introducing the OnePlus 2: the 2016 Flagship Killer

Today, OnePlus finally announced the OnePlus 2. If you didn’t watch the first ever virtual reality product launch, well, here’s a recap.

Funny story though. OnePlus has been leaking specs of the OnePlus 2 for the last month or so. As far as I can recall, they officially announced that it would be $449. The only problem with that is that at the end of the launch, they made jokes about how much it would cost and then cut the lights before they said the price. Are they trying to leave something to the imagination? Who knows?

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OnePlus Could Mean an End to the American Smart Phone Market as We Know It

When OnePlus showed up on the scene a year and a half ago, they came up with their “Never Settle” slogan. Shortly thereafter, people began settling on their products.

At the time, the OnePlus One meant an end to carrier dominance in the United States. For the first time, you could grab a flagship phone with the flagshipiest of flagship specs for just $349 ($299 for the 16 GB model, which is very rare and invitations were few and far between). Sure, there were some marketing disasters but that only gave them more publicity.

Their infamous invite system was a strike of pure genius. After all, when you have to work to get a phone, it’s something that you’re going to tell your friends about and be enthusiastic about. It was ingenious for creating word of mouth advertising.

Then it all went wrong.

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OnePlus 2 will Use Snapdragon 810, but it Won’t Help

By Rich W Woods

I’ve been debating for hours whether or not I want to bother writing about this. Sure, the OnePlus 2 is going to use a Snapdragon 810. Not only that, but it will be version 2.1 of the SoC, meaning that the overheating issues will be solved. Well, hopefully.

First, a little backstory. OnePlus is a start up. They released the OnePlus One in June 2014. With a Snapdragon 801 processor, a 5.5″ 1080p IPS LCD, a 13 MP rear camera, a 5 MP front camera, 3 GB RAM, and 64 GB of on board storage for $349 unlocked, people were pretty psyched. Add to that OnePlus’s invite system, which forced users to actually work for the device, making them part of a tightly knit community.

Needless to say, due to the high end hardware for the low price and the invite system that caused a proud community to be created, the OnePlus One was the hottest phone of 2014.

Note that I said that the Snapdragon 810 won’t help in the title. I stand by that.

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OnePlus One Replacement Unit Unboxing and the Terrible Ordeal to Get It

By Rich W Woods

A few weeks ago, I posted an article called This is How Bad OnePlus’s Customer Service Is. I posted screen shots of the entire exchange of emails between myself and OnePlus customer service and posted the article in the OnePlus forum.

And guess what. After thousands of people saw my ordeal, OnePlus finally sent me a replacement phone. I made an unboxing video where I explain the problems I had with OnePlus’s terrible customer service.

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LG G Flex 2 vs OnePlus One Comparison

By Rich W Woods

So far, I have found the LG G Flex 2 to be an amazing phone. To be completely honest, I found it to be less than exciting when I first heard about it, but when I finally got my hands on it, I realized more and more just how practical and intuitive the curved display is.

Then there’s the OnePlus One. The OnePlus One was one of the hottest phones of 2014, a flagship in its own right, selling for half of the price of its competitors.

Almost a year old, how does the OnePlus One stand up to competing flagships? With the LG G Flex 2, LG G4, Samsung Galaxy S6, and HTC One M9, the OnePlus One is facing down a whole new generation of Android phones. Can it handle the action? Let’s find out.

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This is how Bad OnePlus Customer Service Is

By Rich W Woods

The OnePlus One was possibly the hottest phone of 2014. This was due to the fact that it was a full flagship phone for half of the price of competitors, as well as the infamous invite system.

While the OnePlus One is undoubtedly a fantastic phone, it quickly became known as a “buy at your own risk” phone. It might cost half the price of competing phones, but OnePlus support is a joke and the warranty basically doesn’t cover anything.

I’ve had numerous dealings with OnePlus support. The first time was when I first got the phone and I realized that multitouch didn’t work. I filled out the online form, as there is no live chat or phone number to call, and they responded two weeks later. Their response was basically to wait for a software update that would come a month later.

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HTC One M9 vs OnePlus One Comparison

By Rich W Woods

The HTC One M8 and the OnePlus One were two of the hottest phones of 2014. The OnePlus One became popular for numerous reasons. There was the notorious invite system that made consumers actually work for the device, creating a form of brand loyalty among users. The stock ROM was CyanogenMod, something that drew in Android fanatics. Oh, and did I mention that it has the flagshipiest of flagship specs and for half the price of competitors?

Of course, we’ve compared the OnePlus One with the HTC One M8 before. That’s not big news. The HTC One M8 has now been refreshed. Now it’s time to see how the OnePlus One holds up to the HTC One M9.

The HTC One M9 has been overhauled in every way, with the exception of a physical redesign. The 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 801 has been replaced by a powerful 64 bit Snapdragon 810, the 2 GB of RAM has been replaced by 3 GB, and the ultrapixel camera on the rear has been moved to the front and replaced by a 20 MP rear camera.

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Extras: The Week in Tech #1, Apple Earns and Microsoft Builds

By Rich W Woods

Extras: The Week in Tech is going to be a weekly YouTube video that recaps the week’s tech news. This is the first one. I would love to get some feedback on it, as well as feedback on the name. The name is really just something I thought up.

That being said, there was a lot that happened this week. Apple announced earnings, Google wants to buy your patents, LG announced the G4, and Microsoft had some small event where they announced a couple things <wink>. Check it out.

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Cyanogen and OnePlus Officially Change their Relationship Status to Single

By Rich W Woods

The partnership between Cyanogen and OnePlus is officially over. After months and months of a relationship status of “It’s Complicated”, it’s now officially single.

This has been a long time coming. OnePlus had been planning to launch their own ROM for some time, OxygenOS, which launched earlier this month in April. Trouble really started brewing when OnePlus launched their “Flagship Killer” OnePlus One in India, where Cyanogen had already signed an exclusive deal with Micromax.

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OnePlus One vs Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Comparison

By Rich W Woods

This will be the second comparison I’ve done since I got my hands on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. Now, I can imagine that a number of people from the OnePlus forums are reading this column, so you probably know that I have not historically been a fan of Samsung phones. You saw my review of the Galaxy Note 4, A Perversion of Innovation, and my review of the Galaxy Note Edge, Samsung Makes the Note 4 Worse.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has been telling me that the Samsung Galaxy S6 is going to be the device to change all that. After having the Galaxy S6 Edge for two days now, I think they might be right.

Now those same people have told me that the Samsung Galaxy S6 has the best camera on the market as well. This is something I’m a little more skeptical about. After all, these are folks that went to their local AT&T Store and tested the camera. Honestly, you cannot get any kind of feel for a device, especially the camera, until you take it into the field, take some photos, and compare it to another camera on the same screen. I want to emphasize that it must be the same screen because the display on the Galaxy S6 is absolutely stunning, which is going to make those photos pop.

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