OnePlus One Announced [Thoughts] #neversettle ?

[amintha1992]

i would go for the nexus 5 at the 16 gb for quick updates from google, but the 64GB is the sweet spot for me.

[matin94]

No. The OnePlus One is cheaper by $200 (dunno what it is in GBP) and is more powerful than the Find 7a. Now, the beefier Find 7 on the other hand has that 1440p screen, but other than that, the OnePlus One has the same specs, except for the battery. The OnePlus One has a bigger battery.

Some other things to keep in mind are that the Find 7 and 7a both have metal bodies, micro-SD expansion, and an easily removeable battery, whereas the OnePlus One has none of those.

okay, thanks. Find 7, how good do you think the battery life will be on it? coz im more interested in the metal bodies than anything. i do like the onePlus option as a budget high spec phone

[dizmo]

For a company that started like 5 or 6 moths ago to put out a product that fast is a big deal. And I think the invite system is one way they can take the blame off of themselves for low production rates. At least for now.

It's essentially just a tweaked Find 7. It's nothing that spectacular.

 

I could of sworn it had a metal backplate or something, I think the backplate was made out of magnesium.

Narp, I think the frame of the phone is magnesium. The back plate is just plastic.

 

While it looks like an awesome phone, especially for dat price, I am concerned with how well the product is going to be supported.  A new start up company with no track record, selling a device basically at cost.  How are they making money?  I'd imagine they want to sell as many phones right now to get their brand out, but unless they have wealthy supporters, it's not going to last.

They've stated several times that they have no intention of making any money off of this product. They don't have a great deal invested in R&D, or anything like that. So it's not too surprising that it's priced so low.

Figure $50 from every phone. They have like 20 employees and don't really do any paid marketing. If they sold 50,000 phones, they'd make $2,500,000.

Pretty healthy margins.

 

okay heres a question for you. is the Oppo 7 the same as this Oneplus One? i know theres the Oppo 7a which is the slightly worse version of the oppo 7, but is this Oneplus One the same as the Future 7a

The OnePlus is heavily based on the Find 7, and is made by Oppo.

 

Thats really good

 

No its not the same - however the guy used to be the VP of Oppo - its possible the phone is manufactured by them but not sure. However it is a different company and a different phone

Different company, using Oppo's factories. The guys dad owns the parent company of Oppo, and a few other very large Chinese electronics companies.

 

I'm trying to understand how they can hit this price point without sacrificing their profits.

They're not profiting. Or so they claim.

 

No. The OnePlus One is cheaper by $200 (dunno what it is in GBP) and is more powerful than the Find 7a. Now, the beefier Find 7 on the other hand has that 1440p screen, but other than that, the OnePlus One has the same specs, except for the battery. The OnePlus One has a bigger battery.

Some other things to keep in mind are that the Find 7 and 7a both have metal bodies, micro-SD expansion, and an easily removeable battery, whereas the OnePlus One has none of those.

They're close. Same factory, largely same footprint. OnePlus basically took the Find 7, tweaked it a bit, and called it their own.

Quite a bit of misleading with their marketing tbh.

 

People were really getting desperate in that thread, even going as far as to mention buying pens as an expense for Samsung. This is a completely brand new company, selling a high end product for like half the price, and still making a profit.

There really is no excuse for flagships to be priced so high.

They've stated time and time again that they will not profit from this device.

You also fail to consider all of the other things Samsung does....like actually extensively designing their own products.

This phone is more or less a tweaked Find 7, built in Oppo factories. If they had to build factories, design completely new molds, etc their costs would be considerably higher.

 

But dude! Everyone knows that soda cans is the most premium material known to man. Sude it's brittle as hell, yes it's dirt cheap (even cheaper than a lot of plastic), yes it blocks radio waves which causes big issues but it makes the product seem and feel high quality, and that's what's important, right?

It's totally perception. I prefer metal and leather to plastic. I find it more premium.

Now, I also find carbon premium. They haven't used that yet.

 

 

I really like it, mostly for the price. With that being said though, I don't think this is a "never settle" phone. It has some drawbacks and it's not a "flagship killer" like their marketing says. If you say "it's a flagship killer" and then in the next sentence has to say "yeah, but it's only 300 dollars" then it's not really a flagship killer.

What I am most happy about is actually that they priced the 64GB model very well. It costs Apple less than 20 dollars extra to produce a 64GB version of the iPhone 5S, so why do they charge 200 dollars for it? That's a 800% profit margin. THAT IS INSANE!

OnePlus wants 50 dollars extra, which means their profit margin (on the flash alone) is 50%, which seems a lot more reasonable. It is also an eMMC 5.0 solution, so I am hoping that it's something like the SanDisk iNAND Extreme. That would be amazing.

It's nice to see dual flash as well. It might have been better with a Xenon flash but whatever, it's 300 dollars and that's something not even 900 dollar phones have (except some Nokia ones).

 

Here is a list of things I miss on it:

• Removable battery
• microSD card slot - Can't compete too closely with the Find 7
• OIS in the camera
• Wireless charging - Biggest oversight.
• Snapdragon 805 - Wouldn't have been able to be released on time.
• Front facing speakers
• IR blaster
• USB 3.0
• No mention of SlimPort or MHL support.

 

Not sure about the camera quality and the display yet, but those are two areas I am worried about. Such small pixels and no OIS will probably suffer quite a bit unless it's bright where you take the picture. There is so little info about the display that I wouldn't be surprised if it's not that well calibrated as well. They mention how the speakers have been tuned but not how the display has been calibrated.

Apparently the camera has excellent color calibration, they've compared it to a D3100 and it was quite close, especially in low light situations

The display is a quality unit from JDI or whatever the company is.

[LAwLz]

They've stated time and time again that they will not profit from this device.

You also fail to consider all of the other things Samsung does....like actually extensively designing their own products.

This phone is more or less a tweaked Find 7, built in Oppo factories. If they had to build factories, design completely new molds, etc their costs would be considerably higher.

I can't find an official quote saying this. All I could find was rumors about it not making any money, but at 300 dollars they would still make some (like 50-100 dollars per device).

Oppo isn't letting OnePlus build their phone in their product for free, so that is an expense. The Oppo Find 7 is metal while this is plastic, and there are some subtle differences (like the placement of the speakers, they have different thickness, the mic placement are different, the camera cutout is different, it's slightly taller etc), so they had to make new molds. They couldn't have reused the exact same ones. Sure it didn't cost them as much as completely design one from the ground up, but it's not free like you try to make it out to be.

 

 

It's totally perception. I prefer metal and leather to plastic. I find it more premium.

Now, I also find carbon premium. They haven't used that yet.

Yes you think it's more premium, but it's not and it is objectively worse. Calling an aluminum phone "premium" is kind of like saying your soda can feels premium.

It's actually a really cheap (the raw material is cheaper than a lot of plastics) and really bad material to make phones out of. Personally I think we should be pushing for things like Zylon/Kevlar/carbon fiber reinforced plastic phones. They would be super strong and very light (and don't have the RF issues of aluminum phones). Motorola did it before and it was pretty damn awesome.

 

 

• Snapdragon 805 - Wouldn't have been able to be released on time.

Maybe, but it's still annoying to know that a new SoC is like 1-2 month(s) away. Manufacturers already have access to Snapdragon 805 (the SoC itself is completely done as far as I know) so we are just waiting for them to put it in phones. Samsung has already shown a modified Note 3 with a Snapdragon 805 in it.

 

 

Apparently the camera has excellent color calibration, they've compared it to a D3100 and it was quite close, especially in low light situations

The display is a quality unit from JDI or whatever the company is.

Well the camera comparison was done by OnePlus as far as I know, so it should not be trusted. Just because the panel is good does not mean it is good in the phone. A great panel that is badly calibrated will still be inaccurate. They don't mention anything about it on their site, and I haven't seen any reviewer do proper measurements on it which makes me kind of worried.

[TopWargamer]

okay, thanks. Find 7, how good do you think the battery life will be on it? coz im more interested in the metal bodies than anything. i do like the onePlus option as a budget high spec phone

Battery life is somewhere between Galaxy S4 and LG G2. Look up benchmarks.

[DLM_012]

They're not profiting. Or so they claim.

I don't see how they could possibly profit in the long term then since they don't have any services or software to support the device. By that I mean how console mfgs sell their hardware at a loss but make up those losses and turn a profit through subscription based services and first party games.

[matin94]

Battery life is somewhere between Galaxy S4 and LG G2. Look up benchmarks.

got an LG G2, if its that good, seriously, im diving for it

[matin94]

It's essentially just a tweaked Find 7. It's nothing that spectacular.

 

Narp, I think the frame of the phone is magnesium. The back plate is just plastic.

 

They've stated several times that they have no intention of making any money off of this product. They don't have a great deal invested in R&D, or anything like that. So it's not too surprising that it's priced so low.

Figure $50 from every phone. They have like 20 employees and don't really do any paid marketing. If they sold 50,000 phones, they'd make $2,500,000.

Pretty healthy margins.

 

The OnePlus is heavily based on the Find 7, and is made by Oppo.

 

Different company, using Oppo's factories. The guys dad owns the parent company of Oppo, and a few other very large Chinese electronics companies.

 

They're not profiting. Or so they claim.

 

They're close. Same factory, largely same footprint. OnePlus basically took the Find 7, tweaked it a bit, and called it their own.

Quite a bit of misleading with their marketing tbh.

so the OnePlus One is basically cheaper version of Oppo 7 without the extra things like SD card, wireless charging and stuff you mentioned?

[matin94]

i do understand the differences between the products.

 

basically it goes Oppo 7a, then better version Oneplus One, then Oppo 7 the high end one?

[dizmo]

I can't find an official quote saying this. All I could find was rumors about it not making any money, but at 300 dollars they would still make some (like 50-100 dollars per device).

Oppo isn't letting OnePlus build their phone in their product for free, so that is an expense. The Oppo Find 7 is metal while this is plastic, and there are some subtle differences (like the placement of the speakers, they have different thickness, the mic placement are different, the camera cutout is different, it's slightly taller etc), so they had to make new molds. They couldn't have reused the exact same ones. Sure it didn't cost them as much as completely design one from the ground up, but it's not free like you try to make it out to be.

I'm not going to link a source but it was posted several times in their forum (which is a horribly laid out mess of a thing otherwise I'd go find it) by various employees. It's one of the biggest issues I had with the company. A company that does not seek any kind of profit worries me.

Much closer to $40 per device. It's BOM would be right on par with the S5. Not for free no but at a greatly, greatly reduced price. It's been stated that they can run the company for 2 years without making money..likely on daddys dime.

I didn't try to make it sound free, however it's no where near as expensive as ground up. How else did they do it in the very short time frame, at the very low cost?

 

Yes you think it's more premium, but it's not and it is objectively worse. Calling an aluminum phone "premium" is kind of like saying your soda can feels premium.

It's actually a really cheap (the raw material is cheaper than a lot of plastics) and really bad material to make phones out of. Personally I think we should be pushing for things like Zylon/Kevlar/carbon fiber reinforced plastic phones. They would be super strong and very light (and don't have the RF issues of aluminum phones). Motorola did it before and it was pretty damn awesome.

See, right there is your problem. You can't say that it's not a premium material if I see it as such because it's personal taste. You think plastic is premium. That's great. I don't.

You can make aluminium that doesn't cause RF issues a la M8.

Carbon would have to be titanium reinforced. If it's scratched it shatters, and greatly loses its structural strength. I don't know why they haven't started making the frames out of it, though.

Yeah, the Moto Kevlar backs were nice. They had one of the nicest feels to them as well, though I think that was probably a coating they applied.

 

Maybe, but it's still annoying to know that a new SoC is like 1-2 month(s) away. Manufacturers already have access to Snapdragon 805 (the SoC itself is completely done as far as I know) so we are just waiting for them to put it in phones. Samsung has already shown a modified Note 3 with a Snapdragon 805 in it.

I'm pretty sure there are already Broadwell etc chips out in the wild and in computers as engineering samples...but it doesn't mean that they're ready for mass distro.

I can't wait for the 64 bit chips. More battery life is always a good thing.

 

Well the camera comparison was done by OnePlus as far as I know, so it should not be trusted. Just because the panel is good does not mean it is good in the phone. A great panel that is badly calibrated will still be inaccurate. They don't mention anything about it on their site, and I haven't seen any reviewer do proper measurements on it which makes me kind of worried.

It was done by one of the people they sent the camera review unit to. So the shots are all done by a fanboy, yes, but the low light performance is pretty hard to fake. The rest is possible though, just like they showed the phone under a Z1 width wise saying it was smaller when really it's a few mm larger.

I really hope the camera isn't just more deception from them.

 

 

I don't see how they could possibly profit in the long term then since they don't have any services or software to support the device. By that I mean how console mfgs sell their hardware at a loss but make up those losses and turn a profit through subscription based services and first party games.

From the device itself. I imagine it's probably around $250 for BOM.

If they managed to sell 50,000 phones, which isn't that much of a stretch at all, then they have that $2.5 million to cover costs of staffing etc. More than enough for such a tiny company.

You have to remember, they don't have the OpEx of many larger companies. They likely work out of a single, small office. They don't own factories. They don't invest in research of new chips, or even really totally new designs.

 

so the OnePlus One is basically cheaper version of Oppo 7 without the extra things like SD card, wireless charging and stuff you mentioned?

Pretty much. It has the newer version of Android as well, so that's nice. The Find 7 runs on 4.3

I don't think either device supports wireless charging.

[matin94]

From the device itself. I imagine it's probably around $250 for BOM.

If they managed to sell 50,000 phones, which isn't that much of a stretch at all, then they have that $2.5 million to cover costs of staffing etc. More than enough for such a tiny company.

You have to remember, they don't have the OpEx of many larger companies. They likely work out of a single, small office. They don't own factories. They don't invest in research of new chips, or even really totally new designs.

 

Pretty much. It has the newer version of Android as well, so that's nice. The Find 7 runs on 4.3

I don't think either device supports wireless charging.

i see i see, wireless charging isnt used by me, coz i dont have access to it from my phone. but its the feature i want the most. honestly, i think the only thing stopping me from buyying the one plus is the plastic body. i prefer metal.

[Ebenesh]

I'm trying to understand how they can hit this price point without sacrificing their profits.

The last part of the op is my explanation for ur question I suppose.

[DLM_012]

The last part of the op is my explanation for ur question I suppose.

 

In all honesty I completely missed that. Thanks for bringing it to my attnention

[KatanoWaki]

I'm very interested in this phone. CM, good specs, cheap to buy. I guess I'll have to wait my turn to give them my money. All of the first looks were very positive. 

[TheGosuStandard]

About to buy the N5, waited a month for a new phone thinking the oneplus one would be released, but having to wait until the 28th is going to be impossible. S1 for life >.>

[SOLO_AVENGER]

Narp, I think the frame of the phone is magnesium. The back plate is just plastic.

 

Yeh, I read the article again and it turns put they weren't talking about the back plate.