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.
The Promise
Last June saw Oppo appointing Pete Lau, one of the co-founders of OnePlus, as their Chief Product Experience Officer and Senior VP while continuing to be the Chief Executive Officer at OnePlus. This major leadership reshuffle followed the departure of former VP Brian Shen. The idea, as mentioned earlier, is to streamline their operations, helping the company to create better products and dish out faster software updates to its phones. It all sounded pretty good on paper for the most part. After all, OnePlus has long abandoned its “flagship killer” slogan in order to move up the ranks of mainstream smartphone manufacturers. As mentioned earlier, many of OnePlus’ phones featured some proprietary features that were eerily similar to what Oppo offers on their phones (cough … Dash charging … cough). To many people, it’s a mere announcement to make what has been a secret reunion between the two companies more explicit.
Another major announcement was the fact that OnePlus will be merging its own OxygenOS with Oppo’s ColorOS in an attempt to streamline the process of pushing software updates. This comes after OnePlus announced that it will be swapping out its own HydrogenOS for Oppo’s ColorOS on its phones in China. While it all sounds very promising on paper, its execution left a lot to be desired.
The Execution
Bearing in mind that this merger between the companies was only announced a couple of months ago, there isn’t a lot to talk about in terms of the effect of the announcement on the respective companies, especially on Oppo’s side. Still, Oppo managed to make a statement for itself by entering the foldable market with a splash. In an attempt to allegedly fix the shortcomings of Samsung’s Z Fold 3, Oppo launched the Find N, featuring an arguably more usable 18:9 display, a slightly bigger battery, and faster-charging speeds across the board. It does however come with its caveats — the outer display is only limited to 60 Hz, and unlike the Z Fold 3, the Oppo Find N lacks an official IP rating. Still, the Oppo Find N will very likely give its arch-rival a very good run for its money, should Oppo decide to expand its regional availability — the Oppo Find N is only available in China, unfortunately. Other than that, there isn’t much to talk about on Oppo’s side post the OnePlus/Oppo merger. So far, it seems to be business as usual for Oppo, which I doubt can be said about OnePlus.
While Oppo seems to have taken the foldable market by storm, OnePlus still managed to make the headlines, albeit for all the wrong reasons. For starters, OnePlus seems to be emphatically lagging behind when it comes to software updates. It’s 2022 now and only the OnePlus 9 series got the coveted Android 12 software update. To put things into perspective, Samsung has begun updating each of the Galaxy S21, Note 20, S20, and even the S10 series to OneUI 4.0 — its own skinned version of Android 12. Surely, it’s a seriously impressive effort on Samsung’s side, but it’s not like OnePlus was known to lag behind by that much of a gap on this front.
Even more frustrating, the much anticipated Android 12 update seems to have made things worse. Essentially, OnePlus’ OxygenOS has become just another ColorOS spin-off after the update, doing away with a lot of the features its users much appreciated before. Not only that, the OxygenOS/ColorOS 12 update introduced a whole slew of bugs and instability issues, so much that it rendered the OnePlus 9 borderline unusable — some users have even mistaken it for another public beta version, only to be shocked that this is indeed the final build. Thankfully, OnePlus took notice of this disastrous update experience and acted swiftly, halting the software update and resuming it shortly after, fixing the reported bugs in the process. But unfortunately to some, the damage was already done. Some users reported that a factory reset apparently irons out all these system glitches, suggesting that the migration process to ColorOS is the main culprit. Still, factory resetting your phone is not the ideal solution for such a substantial problem on a phone that costs as much as the OnePlus 9 Pro or even its more affordable variant.
The Verdict
Shifting strategies is absolutely crucial for any company vying to increase its dominance in the market. With Huawei’s exit from the international market leaving a gaping hole behind, Oppo seems to be hell-bent on seizing what once was Huawei’s market share. The jury is still out on Oppo’s and OnePlus’ endeavors, but as far as early impressions go, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. While they surely are on the right path when it comes to creating better products — the Oppo Find N has been heaped with nothing but praise — they didn’t particularly hit the ground running on the software update front. Let’s hope OnePlus rectifies this glaring issue before it’s too late. In such a competitive market, every small detail matters.
Featured-Image: CNET
