[GTALUG] (off topic) unlocked phones

Evan Leibovitch evan at telly.org
Fri Oct 23 05:17:37 UTC 2015


I've been asked why I said about the OnePlus: "nice phone, supremely flaky
company". Here are my reasons for saying this after being in the queue to
get a 1+1 and then abandoning that world in favour of conventional retail
(I ended up with an LG G4):

   - The invite system. In the early days it was excusable, a way to
   control distribution at a time when they didn't anticipate demand and were
   literally creating a market category. Now they have an idea of what demand
   is, so retaining the invite system for the 1+2 becomes just a lame
   publicity stunt. The substantial effort to obtain an invite, IMO, adds to
   the cost of the phone unless your time is worthless. Furthermore ... the
   invites, when they come, arrive without warning and have a 24-hour expiry,
   so it's nearly to buy one when you want to do so ... like when you need to
   replace your existing phone. What the hell is up with that?

   - To get an invite (without buying one or getting a rare "sharable"
   invite) you have to participate in their social media presence, dominated
   by fanboyz and cool-geek-wannabes. Apple fans, though bigger in numbers,
   have nothing on this crowd when it comes to blind loyalty. Last year when I
   joined the forums, looking to get an invite, it was one of the most
   content-free discussion experiences I have ever encountered

   - The online company reps are very friendly and open to talk about
   features and Neat Stuff, completely unresponsive about issues or
   deficiencies. There is robotic, heavily scripted,
   ever-cheery-even-when-useless feel to customer service that I can best
   characterize as that of staff at Disneyland; I found it immensely
   frustrating;

   - OnePlus has had quite a lot of problems with Canada Customs; for a
   six-month period last year they completely stopped shipping to Canada, and
   their ever-so-useless support staff wouldn't explain why. After piecing
   together some user forum posts it appears that OnePlus lied on its customs
   declarations, and a whole bunch of devices were held at customs for a LONG
   time. They have switched shippers often enough to make one uncomfortable.
   This matter may be solved by now, but my experience eliminated my
   confidence in the company to handle shipping issues should I ever need to
   send the phone back for repairs. (There are no repair depots in Canada of
   which I am aware),

   - The company's management totally botched its OS strategy. It failed to
   anticipate the (totally predictable) problems it would have as CyanogenMod
   commercialized, which (amongst other things) kept it out of India for
   nearly a year. Its update schedule has never met targets, Why it is not
   just going with stock Android is a mystery, I foresee problems with Oxygen
   as well; everything they know about Android seems to come from the
   custom-ROM-modding world, and that environment has its limits.

When the OnePlus One came out it was indeed a market-reshaper. For a long
time it was the only phone in its class, and was worth the grief listed
above. But now Asus, Motorola, Alcatel, Huawei, Xiaomi and others have
discovered that the real growth market for phones is in this midrange
rather than flagships. So now, if I don't care to buy a OnePlus within the
24-hour window they bestow upon me, I can tell them to go screw themselves
and check out the worthy competition.

I hope I have answered the question sufficiently :-)


On 23 October 2015 at 05:38, Clifford Ilkay <clifford_ilkay at dinamis.com>
wrote:

> On 22/10/15 11:16 PM, Bob Jonkman wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On 22/10/15 05:56 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>>
>>> And don't even mention the Oneplus; nice phone, supremely flaky
>>> company.
>>>
>> Could you clarify? I've been thinking of a OnePlus Two as my next phone...
>>
>
> Evan said it's a flaky company and didn't pass judgment on the phone. I
> have one and I quite like it. My son bought a Zen Phone. It seems OK, too.
> I haven't switched to Oxygen OS. I quite like Cyanogenmod, though the
> update I got in August has had a few issues, not the least being that
> Bluetooth stopped working after the update. I reinstalled the OS and all
> was well. I notice I have another update but I haven't spent the time to
> figure out how to install that update now that I have TWRP, which I'd
> installed to reinstall the OS.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Clifford Ilkay
>
> +1 647-778-8696
>
>
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-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Geneva, CH

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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