I've always felt that Oneplus is a brand that I should like on principle of having clean software with barebones but powerful hardware, but in reality, every single Oneplus phone I've seen always had some sort of big BUTs attached to them, so buying Oneplus always feels like settling.
Take the Oneplus One for example, that sandstone textured cover was THE most creative material I felt a phone could have had, and I'm honestly shocked nobody has ever done it again. But along with that of course, comes with the cringy "smash your phone" marketing campaign, the half-hearted attempt to distance themselves from their parent company Oppo, the whole software mess with CyanogenMod/OxygenOS, etc.
Had a Oneplus 3T for a while, same deal: Great phone when it works as intended, but they raised their price without making the phone better, and the inexplicable random restarts/battery drain is so irritating, never had another phone that does that.
Recently they've dropped all pretense of not being Oppo and abandoned their core audience, choosing to have the "courage" to drop the headphone jack. Mediocre Chinese phones with flagship specs are a dime a dozen, I just don't see a reason to buy them anymore.
I don't like them. I think they are trying to be Apple and I hate that because it means higher prices, fewer features. No headphone jack, no SD card slot, no dual SIM, high prices.
That's not meant to be the Android way. Android is all about choice and options. That's what I love about Sony, and why I have a Sony Xperia 10iii - they give you more: award winning design, sleek form factor, fantastic cameras, headphone jack, SD card slot, dual SIM, waterproofing, easily removable SIM tray, notification LED, battery care, long battery life, great OLED screen, NFC, HiRes audio on wired and wireless, MP3 upscale to improve music quality on MP3 tracks, great video recording (up to 4K on mine), support app built in, fast stock launcher will little bloat. I'm even a fan of the dedication Google Assistant button and use it all the time.
And the price was great because I got it on sale for just €350.
That's how Android should be: options, choice, value for money
Edit: I forgot to mention that Sony allows unlocking the bootloader if you want to install other ROM's like Sailfish, Lineage etc
Ditto on that lol. I have the oneplus 11. Bought it right when it came out.
The camera is pretty good. I actually like the in screen fingerprint sensor. The rest of the phone is pretty trash. The UI changes they did feel, wrong. I don't even know how to describe it. My unihertz looks better.
The biggest sin of oneplus tho, is nearly unfunctional bluetooth. It's constantly dropping out on me. Android auto doesn't work half the time. I used it for about 3 months and went back to my sony
I'm still on my 5T. A lovely device and I'll use it for as long as I can (replaced the battery once already). My only two complaints would be the lack of stabilization on the camera and a slightly dim display in daylight.
Apart from that - it's everything I want in a phone, but I won't buy another oneplus. No audio jack and a real stiff price increase. If I were to switch today I'd probably aim for asus zenphone lineup if I can afford it.
That was actually one of the things I looked up before buying it. Opening up the device is doable, if a bit difficult. Phone felt like new after the replacement, and is still going strong after almost 6 years now.
Only trouble I've had is finding new phone cases xD
Is it just me that reads "award winning design" and instantly mentally classifies a post as "likely marketing"?!
WTF is the value for a customer if their phone's design has received awards?
I mean, does any genuine human out there choose the looks of their phone based on the awards it got rather than, you know, personally likeing said looks???!
I stopped reading out of habit as soon as I got to the "award winning design" and "form factor". Such marketing buzzwords are usually a good sign telling me that part of the text has no valuable information and should be skipped.
I hadn't even noticed this habit and I have no idea when it started. I wonder what other subconscious reading optimizations I've made, and how they might impact the type of information I read without me realizing it...