October 2015. The OnePlus 2 launched in July and the OnePlus X has just launched this week, and the honest assessment of both is that OnePlus is finding out how hard it is to follow an unexpectedly successful first product. The 2 is called the “2016 Flagship Killer” by Pete Lau on stage, which is a reasonable specification claim: Snapdragon 810, 4GB of RAM, 5.5-inch 1080p display, USB-C before USB-C is standard, a fingerprint scanner when most Android manufacturers do not have one. At $329, it is still underpriced relative to what it offers. On paper, it is the correct next step.
Where the OnePlus 2 is falling short
The Snapdragon 810 has a thermal throttling problem that every review in the last three months has confirmed. The problem is not OnePlus’s fault, it is Qualcomm’s, and it affects every device running this chip. But “not our fault” is not satisfying when your flagship phone heats up under sustained load. The community on the forums is noticing. NFC has been removed, which the community is criticizing loudly. The camera performance is inconsistent. The invite system for the 2 has been slower and more frustrating than for the One, prompting Carl Pei’s public apology on the forums last month. Pei’s apology was genuine and well-handled. It also revealed a scaling problem: the invite system that worked charmingly at 100,000 units is creating real frustration at the scale the 2 needs to achieve.
The OnePlus X and what it reveals
The OnePlus X at $249 is OnePlus’s attempt to expand its addressable market downward: a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED, Snapdragon 801, glass-and-metal design that reviewers are calling the most premium-feeling OnePlus device yet. The problem is the Snapdragon 801 in October 2015 is a 2014 chip, and the tech enthusiast community that forms OnePlus’s primary audience is sophisticated enough to notice. More importantly, the software support commitment for the X appears to be lighter than for the main lineup, which contradicts the software quality thesis that is central to why people buy OnePlus phones in the first place.
The pattern the X is establishing, price expansion downward without full software parity, is one the community will remember and reference in every future discussion about budget OnePlus devices. Whether the company learns from this or repeats it is a question that will define how OnePlus manages its product line as it grows. Right now, in October 2015, the answer is not yet clear. What is clear is that the “best specs at the lowest price” thesis is harder to execute on two simultaneous products than it was on one.
Part of OnePlus: The Complete Story, my full history of OnePlus from founding to the Realme merger.