The folks at OnePlus have been building up hype around their first smartphone launch, and today the OnePlus One finally became official. Announced at an event in China, the Magnesium constructed One weighs just 162g, has a recessed bezel round the edges, what it says are “beautiful contours” and a ton of beefy hardware inside.
The price was also built up ahead of launch and OnePlus hasn’t disappointed on this front. The 16GB version will be available unlocked and SIM-free for just $299 while the 64GB is an extremely impressive $349. In Europe those prices translate to ^Alb229/^Alb269 and ^a'not269/^a'not299 which on the face of it alone is extremely good value for the hardware alone. It’s set to become available sometime in Q2.
OnePlus is founded by the founder of Oppo. Unsurprisingly, the OnePlus One looks like a Find 5 successor, which can only be seen as a good thing in my view – especially because it ships with CyanogenMod by default. The end result is that I’m pretty sure that the best Android phones are currently not made by Samsung or HTC – but by tiny Chinese manufacturers.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I were Samsung, HTC, or Sony – I’d be afraid of these companies. Great build quality, unique design, top-notch specifications, and usually great community support – at half the price of Samsung/HTC/etc. flagships, fully unlocked.
Two things will happen. Expect increased lobbying spending on discrediting Chinese manufacturers, and I expect more and and more public talk about how Chinese electronics cannot be trusted.
Is there a reason they don’t just ship with the standard google Android 4.x ?
I assume future upgrades are easier using Cyanogenmod.
Cyanogenmod IS standard google Android. Or much closer to the standard Android than what, say, Samsung delivers.
It’s generally called a mod because you install it on a phone that already has a different Android customized by the manufacturer. But in this case it’s the primary OS.
I’m interested…
But does Cyanogen include all the nice Google proprietary software such as Google services, Gmail, Play Store, Play Music, Play Books, Chrome, Pictures, Calendar, Maps, Hangouts, etcetera? The AOSP alternatives are usable, but quite pedestrian, especially in such an advanced device.
I guess Google should be happy to put all those in about any device, after all they rake them info and money, but I’m not sure that is the case.
Stock CyanogenMod comes without Google apps (a separate download of dubious legality is of course available), but this phone comes with it pre-installed, of course. For this it needed to be cleared with Google, which gave the developers a few sleepless nights.
Cyanogen does in fact customise Android quite a bit, although the user interface is pretty similar to stock.
Because doing that would mean they’d need their own development team (Google isn’t going to do that for them). With CM – that job falls on CM’s shoulders.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I were Samsung, HTC, or Sony – I’d be afraid of these companies. Great build quality, unique design, top-notch specifications, and usually great community support – at half the price of Samsung/HTC/etc. flagships, fully unlocked.”
that they do not have carrier relations and the multi million dollar advertisement contracts to brain wash the rest of the population.
Besides who wants to be spied by Chinese companies amIrite? The are reading my e-mail, and listening to my phone ca… What’s that? It’s Obama?! Oh, never mind.
This is the first Android phone I’ve been interested in since the Nexus 4. A shame it doesn’t run Sailfish OS though.
I wondered why they said it weighed ‘just’ 162g, then I saw that it’s a behemoth! It’s obviously targeted at Galaxy Note users – even has the back button on the right. So its appeal will be limited to a small (but significant) niche.
Anyway, it would have to offer more than just good specs to get me away from my Moto X.
Exactly. I’m fine with the phablet concept, my wife has a note 3, but the “regular” models have now moved into the phablet range and that’s sucks. If you want a high end sub-5″ phone the moto X is practically it. It’s pretty much set in stone now, because who would want to “downgrade” their screen size on the latest and greatest model?
There’s also Sony Xperia Z1 Compact (and there ought to be Z2 Compact soon…)
Sony should get some credit, but unfortunately right now they are basically ignoring the US market.
I hope for the sake of the environment this part of the article was a mistranslation:
“OnePlus fans can go to oneplus.net/smash to apply to smash their current phone in exchange for a OnePlus One.”
This phone is interesting to mobile geeks, but let’s be realistitic, all the major phones look pretty much the same these days. You can find the important differences if you’re the sort of person who hangs out at OS News, but for most people, there’s nothing special about OnePlus One. I don’t think this is anything for Samsung to be fearful of (HTC should certainly be worried, but not necessarily about this particular manufacturer).
I know a lot of people are hoping for the Apple/Samsung duopoly to be broken (and there seems to be an anti-Samsung backlash lately, following on the pro-Samsung backlash at the the height of Apple’s patent trolling), which I can appreciate, but let’s keep things in perspective. This phone isn’t going to excite the public. It might be a success the company can build on, but there’s nothing disruptive to the market here.
Price.
for a phone or tablet that gives me full desktop capabilities. I know it will be slower than a laptop or even a (non-mobile) desktop or server. But my laptop is 1.5kg including power supply. And I can not carry it in an inner pocket of my sack coat.
A phone or tablet that runs
* the desktop variants of Libre-/OpenOffice or Microsoft Office
* Project Planning Software
* Eclipse based IDEs
* other IDEs like Idea, NetBeans
* UML Tools
* …
A phone or tablet that features a docking station to connect to
* monitors,
* keyboard,
* mouse,
* wacom,
* ethernet,
* external storage,
* …
A phone ore tablet that shares
* GUI API
* OS API
* tool chain
with its
* laptop
* desktop
* server
family members.
I do not care much whether the OS is called Ubuntu Phone or Microsoft Windows Phone.
Greetings,
pica
EDIT: typo corrected
Edited 2014-04-23 15:28 UTC
We had that with the Motorola Atrix and Photon. The former had a laptop-style dock with a screen, mouse, and keyboard, and the latter had a docking station that connected to an HDMI display and accepted USB input devices.
It was a wonderful concept, one that I loved so much that I bought a used Photon and a docking station just to be able to play with it. It really was pretty nifty, but I discovered the likely reason the concept died: The phones were terrible at being phones. The Photon (and presumably the Atrix as they were basically the same phone) had pre-acquisition Motorola’s slow, buggy, ugly UI on top of Android 2.3. It was a nightmare to try to use as a phone, and the docking feature simply didn’t bring enough to the table to make it worthwhile. Combined with Motorola’s war on the Android hacking community making it nearly impossible to install a custom ROM, it made for a miserable experience.
Unfortunately, no current major manufacturer has been willing to provide such a beneficial feature on their devices. It’s a shame, because (on my Photon at least) it was more or less a full Ubuntu Linux installation with a customized GUI. It was trivial to get around that GUI and use the full power of the OS. Maybe, if Samsung stays true to the rumors and really does start releasing Tizen based phones, there’s hope that one can connect their device to a big screen and use Bluetooth peripherals to make a desktop computer out of it.
> … The phones were terrible at being phones. …
I think a mechanism similar to Eclipse perspectives could help.
The phone starts in a simple phone perspective. Just phone, address book, calendar and of cause the perspective switch are visible. No more.
If required other user definable perspectives can be activated. In my case this would be
* talk presenting
* text processing
* modelling
* Java development
* …
perspectives.
BTW, I also wish such a feature in desktop GUIs. In Gnome 3 as example the “show applications” icon could be transformed into a “show perspectives” icon showing the all perspective and all user defined perspectives. The favorites and maybe also the backbround change as you change your perspective.
Greetings,
pica
I would use such a phone for my business.
As a result
* the phone must be business like dressed
* must have a scratch resistant body & glass
* must be at least 5 years fully supported (incl. OS)
* must feature removable batteries
* must fit into the inner pocket of a sack coat
* must feature an (mini) HDMI or (mini) DP port
* must feature a micro SD slot
* must feature WLAN
* must feature 1GB Ethernet via docking station
* must feature at least 2 DP ports via docking station
* must feature USB 3 ports via docking station
* must work a whole working day without recharging or battery change (tablet mode)
Spec low end
* at least PentiumM 1.6GHz like performance
* at least 4GB of RAM
* at least 64GB of internal flash memory
* at least FullHD IPS screen
–> USD 1000 w/o VAT or ^a'not1000 incl. VAT
Spec preferred
* at least Core2 duo 1.6GHz like performance
* at least 8GB of RAM
* at least 128GB of internal flash memory
* at least FullHD IPS screen
–> USD 1500 w/o VAT or ^a'not1500 incl. VAT
The docking station should be less than USD 100 w/o VAT or ^a'not100 incl. VAT.
What do you think about it?
Greetings,
pica
This phone looks great. The price looks great. The problem is that you need an invite by someone that has one already in order to buy one. You can’t just go to the website and purchase one.
From their website:
An interesting marketing approach that may not sit so well with a lot of customers…
Edited 2014-04-23 15:56 UTC
I recon this will be very much like Gmail invites from back in the day.
Everyone who wants one will have 20 by the end of the week and in doing so you will also be part of their social media campaign (fb, twitter, etc) which will bring them in more revenue when they sell on.
People will sell invites on Ebay etc. That’s how I got into Gmail originally.
and I expect more and and more public talk about how Chinese electronics cannot be trusted.
Jesus Thom, do you have to bring politics to every damn article? relax a litle.
Edited 2014-04-23 16:12 UTC
You DID know this was Thom’s personal blog, right?
Anyway, just like with the new Oppo phone, unless they’re handing out complementary clown pants with this thing so I can store it comfortably in my pocket, I’m not too interested.
The thing about spying is governments seem to be most content spying on their own citizens. I’m probably better off taking my chances with a Chinese phone.
I agree with commenter on the site:
Gorgeous looking phone with a garbage looking UI. So sad, it had potential. (refering to this “We’re looking at a flatter-than-flat UI”)
Being unlocked and running CyanogenMod 11 wouldn’t it be pretty easy to just change the whole ROM or edit the UI to be more like vanilla Android? I saw something on youtube that mentioned you could adjust the UI to be less flat.
I think the more interesting points are being missed.
Phones such as this one reflect Qualcomm’s acceptance of the reality that they absolutely cannot afford to be confined to the over $500 USD smartphone market. Nor can they afford to be shut out of China.
So Qualcomm and China cut a deal. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade. Qualcomm cross-licensed their LTE patents to Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE and supported the Chinese combination of TD-LTE and TD-SCDMA and in return it appears Qualcomm got access to the entire Chinese market.
Thom, what you fail to note is that the hold-up on these phones making it to North America is likely Qualcomm’s refusal to cross-license its legacy crown jewels, its CDMA patents that enable backwards compatibility with Verizon. This North American patent wall of Qualcomm’s is what I have extensively documented in the past as the force that brought down Nokia. This patent wall I have speculated is basically a United States version of industrial policy, just as China has its own mobile industrial policy to benefit its own companies. That is partly why AT&T doesn’t jump in either to embrace these phones.
It’s astonishing to me in light of other revelations of how the United States works with big telecom companies how Internet journalists are basically passing up free scoops.
And anyone with the slightest acquaintance with Chinese history will realize quite soon they are going to invert from their fascination with Western brands to the old way of thinking that China, China’s technology, and China’s culture are the greatest in the world. I think the German brands will still do okay but a lot of other Western brands are going to be due for a rude awakening.
Edited 2014-04-23 17:18 UTC
This made my day. 1 dollar isn’t 1 euro, unless you are a major electronics manufacturer, in that case it is.
This made my week. Smartphone manufacturers should stop charging a markup for storage (especially now that Google crippled MicroSD cards in kitkat). It’s like what laptop manufacturers did in 2007, they ‘d sell you a laptop with 1GB of ram, and the extra 1GB required to have a usable machine came at double the price it should be. Most people just went to the local computer shop and had the employee put in an extra 1GB.
Edited 2014-04-23 20:30 UTC
I’ve done non-removable battery.
I’ve done no SD card.
I’ve done small screen.
I’ve done crappy cameras.
I’ve done slow wifi.
I’ve done crappy speaker out the back.
I’ve done no screen tap to unlock phone.
I’ve even done one sim card slot instead of two.
Gosh darn it, I never want to go back. But I must! Because rather than differing by nuances, even the latest phones differ by not-mutually-exclusive primary features.
And in other news, this is OSAlert, and this phone supports an open source fork of an open source OS. That is fucking awesome!
What part of it is magnesium, or is that the name of a company? Magnesium is an unstable metal that reacts easily with water and acid, so it will damage if you have it in a pocket in the rain, or spill Coke or fruit juice on it.
Bulk magnesium is quite stable due to an unreactive oxide layer. It is unaffected by water or food acids (unless you soak the phone in it for a few hours).
IT sounds like a great phone for the three months until it stops working.
If it sounds too cheap to be true, it is.
Hello? Reality here. Most phone boards are made in Foxconn or similar factory.
The company is probably selling at near-zero margins to crack themselves into the market
Most of the Chinese phones are built on very reliable Taiwanese designed reference platforms.
You aren’t paying for fancy stores and constant TV advertising. That’s why they are cheap.
Please don’t insult my intelligence. I used to be in electrical sales and I’ve heard all those things before, my boss used to say them and they were/are lies to sell products. The cheap brands are cheap partly because of no advertising, but mostly because corners have been cut in manufacturing and QA is virtually nonexistent.
If you want to buy a phone that will self-destruct even before it becomes obsolete, then be my guest. Just don’t tell others to waste their money on shoddy merchandise.