News and notes on the latest from Google.
Earlier this week, OnePlus pre-announced the OnePlus 10 Pro — OnePlus’ annual refresh of its flagship smartphone. Indeed, OnePlus is among the first companies to launch its flagship of this year, trailing Xiaomi by just a couple of days. Just like every year, the OnePlus 10 Pro has raised the eyebrows of many of its fan base, albeit this time for the wrong reasons.
It’s been nearly 8 years since OnePlus was first founded. Indeed, OnePlus has left its stamp on the market, particularly the affordable flagship segment. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to notice how OnePlus has strayed from its nimble and agile former self to become one of the bigger manufacturers in the mainstream market. It could be argued that OnePlus could only achieve its mainstream status under the guidance of its sister company Oppo. Many of its employees used to work at Oppo beforehand, with many of OnePlus’ latter phones taking a lot of cues from other Oppo phones, particularly in terms of design. To many of the tech-savvy consumers, it was only a matter of time before the OnePlus/Oppo partnership would be officially announced. Fast forward to this year, and the inevitable has happened. Pete Lau, now the Chief Product Experience Officer at Oppo, has confirmed that OnePlus will be further integrating with its sister company Oppo to “capitalize on the additional shared resources.” So how did that go? So far, well, not so well.
Continue reading “The rise and fall of OnePlus’ merger with Oppo”
Earlier this week, OnePlus announced its all-new OnePlus 9 Pro, its fully-fledged no-frills flagship, along with its slightly toned-down sibling, the OnePlus 9. Naturally, with a Hasselblad badge on the back, the OnePlus 9 Pro claimed all the headlines, with the promise of providing a much-improved camera system to its consumer base. However, with yet another incremental price hike seeping through, OnePlus might have punched a bit over its weight. At $969, OnePlus is no longer undercutting the competition, instead further reinstating its status as a competitive flagship smartphone vendor. Sniffing at the heels of other household names such as Samsung is no easy task, but perhaps OnePlus feels ready enough to compete with the likes of the Korean behemoth. That seems to be the case on paper, but in reality, OnePlus might need to up the ante a bit to swing the balance in their favor. Here’s why I think OnePlus might need to step up to prove its worth.
This week, Google is rolling out several new features to its cloud gaming service, Stadia. Also, in case you missed it, five new free games launched on Stadia Pro for June with The Elder Scrolls Online launching June 16th.
After numerous leaks and endless hyping, OnePlus unveiled the OnePlus 8 and the OnePlus 8 Pro. And as their monikers suggest, these are the latest sequels to last year’s OnePlus 7T and OnePlus 7T Pro. While most people have been heaping praise on the latter, the OnePlus 8 has been nothing short of divisive. Sure, both phones share the burden of convincing the user base to spend $200 more on their yearly upgrade. But, in my not-so-humble opinion, the OnePlus 8 can’t even come close.
Continue reading “OnePlus might have become a victim of its own success, courtesy of the OnePlus 8”
Just as the case with the past years, and despite the calamitous threat of the deadly Coronavirus causing GSMA to call off this year’s MWC, many of the tech companies have unveiled their latest addition to the lineups of their flagship smartphones. But as we drool over the rapid advancements in network speeds and processing power introduced to us every year, it still remains a tough task to guess whether these new smartphones will stand the test of time and prove to be a reliable option a year or two down the road. With the news of my Essential PH-1 will no longer receive official support, I thought it might be the best time to conduct a little experiment to deduce how well do older flagship smartphones stand the test of time.
Continue reading “How well does flagship hardware age in the long-run?”
Back in 2017, Apple kickstarted a new trend of UI navigation on our phones via dedicated navigation gestures instead of using on-screen buttons (or a dedicated button tucked in the bottom bezel in the case of the iPhones). There’s no denying the fact that there was a somewhat steep learning curve to go through before getting used to the new navigation gestures on the iPhone X. But ultimately, this became the new trend going forwards that all OEMs sought to join. Google had a go at it the following year, though Android Pie’s navigation gestures looked like a hasty attempt to announce Android as a native supporter of gestural navigation. This year though, Google went back to the drawing board and gave it a more serious thought.
Continue reading “Opinion: Android 10’s new gestural navigation is far from ideal”
Ever since the launch of the original OnePlus One, the recipe for a killer mid-range smartphone was very simple: flagship specs coupled with a modest camera hardware setup for nearly half the price of a fully fledged flagship. Things like decent software support and build quality were the icing on the cake, but they were never a guarantee. Over time, as prices kept creeping up, these two factors started to become a bigger part of the picture, even putting some of the bigger names to the sword—OnePlus is talking about updating the OnePlus 5/5T to Android Q while Samsung is yet to roll out the Android Pie update to the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Of course, this incredibly saturated segment of the market features a lot of the endeavors of other companies. But ultimately, they all share the same recipe. Google, on the other hand, had the guts to stray away from that route and create their own recipe for a worthy mid-range smartphone. In this article, we will discuss why Google’s new recipe will pay huge dividends to the Mountain View tech giant.
Continue reading “Why the Pixel 3a is the best mid-range phone you can buy in the US”
Today, OnePlus held an event to reveal two new smartphones: the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro. This is a first for OnePlus because they have always launched one flagship at a time. The OnePlus 7 is a small step up from the OnePlus 6T and comes with mainly spec bumps. The OnePlus 7 Pro, on the other hand, is OnePlus’ flagship that OnePlus can actually pit in front of its competitors.
Continue reading “OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro: Everything you need to know”
Back in November of last year, we discussed how Android 9 Pie on the OnePlus 6 differed from that on the Pixel 2 XL, which can be regarded as nearly stock AOSP. While there might be little to no difference at first glance, a closer look reveals that such a claim couldn’t be more wrong. Not only does OxygenOS offer more features that enrich the functionality of the phone, but it does also have some noticeable design alterations. This lightly-skinned version of Android Pie might appeal to the overwhelming majority of users. However, quite a lot of the tech-enthusiasts feel like being left in the dark following this mindset transition, myself considered. So what is it that makes the die-hard custom ROM enthusiasts dump OxygenOS in a heartbeat and flash a custom ROM on their phones? Well, without further ado, let’s dive in and find out.
Continue reading “Why custom ROM users are quick to dump OxygenOS”
