OnePlus phones - A history of the company’s entire lineup so far - Android - Canadian apps and news

OnePlus phones - A history of the company’s entire lineup so far - Android

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The first OnePlus phone dropped in 2014. Let's take a look at the OnePlus One and each phone the company has launched since.

In late 2013, two former Oppo employees started a new smartphone brand called OnePlus. Their vision was to make OnePlus phones the devices that ticked off every box Android fans needed: great design, powerful specs, the fastest and leanest software, and a low price. The dream became a reality in 2014 with the launch of the OnePlus One.

Since then, OnePlus has moved up from its humble beginnings as an online-only niche smartphone maker to a literal global powerhouse. When you take a step back and realize it’s been just under seven short years, it really is quite the achievement.

With the launch of the next OnePlus phone right around the corner, we thought we would lay out a thorough history of each major OnePlus device. From the OnePlus One to the OnePlus Nord, they are all here.

Editor’s note: To keep things concise, we’ll be sticking to the core OnePlus phones. There have been subtle variants of some of the company’s devices that just aren’t unique enough to spend too much time on.

OnePlus One: The OG

It wouldn’t be surprising if every smartphone brand that’s started since 2014 has brought up the OnePlus One at meetings as an example of what they want to do. You couldn’t ask for a more successful launching pad for a brand. Simply put, all future OnePlus phones will be forever compared to this one.

All in all, the One wasn’t too different from other Android phones of its time. However, it had a few things going for it that set it apart. The first is the software, which was, at launch, the Android-based Cyanogen OS, which forked off from the popular custom ROM known as CyanogenMod. Cyanogen OS was lean and developer-friendly, making it appealing to both Android tinkerers as well as general users who appreciate a bloat-free experience.

Related: OnePlus One revisited

Another unique aspect of the One was the price. The phone started at just $299, which was incredibly cheap when you factor in that it came with the latest Snapdragon 800 processor. When you combined that with the stunning design of the device (that Sandstone back!) you had a 2014 Android enthusiast’s dream machine.

When the One first launched, OnePlus took the unorthodox route of selling it via an invite system. To buy the phone — which could only be purchased online — you needed a unique one-time-use invite code. The company seeded out a small batch of original codes to prominent members of its then-small community. After buying the One with those codes, those people would then get a new invite code they could share. Those invite codes would then turn into a new invite code and on it would go.

While this left a lot of early fans frustrated, it had two incredibly positive effects for OnePlus: it helped balance supply and demand for the very young company, as well as build buzz for the device. The invite code system ensured that if you owned a OnePlus One, you were somebody.

Although exact sales numbers for the OnePlus One are hard to come by, the company did divulge that it had sold over a million OnePlus phones by the end of 2014. This is pretty remarkable when you learn that OnePlus only anticipated selling 50,000 units of the One.

OnePlus One fast facts:

The OnePlus One launched with Android 4.4.2 KitKat and its final official update was Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Although the One launched with Cyanogen OS as its Android skin, problems with Cyanogen, Inc. forced OnePlus to cease ties and create its own skin. Thus, Oxygen OS was born, making the OnePlus One a unique device that had two different official skins from completely different sources during its lifetime.
At various times, OnePlus did put the One up for sale without requiring an invite code. For example, the company temporarily lifted the invite system for the 2014 iteration of Black Friday.
Since the company started in December 2013 and released its first phone only a few months later, it is assumed that Oppo supplies OnePlus with resources to help it along. However, OnePlus continually denies that it is a subsidiary of Oppo and downplays Oppo’s possible involvement in its R&D.
In 2014, the price of the phone started at $299, or about $327 in 2020 dollars.

OnePlus 2: The sophomore slump

By the end of 2014, OnePlus found itself with a problem: it had gotten too big too fast. Now, this is a problem that most companies would love to have, no doubt, but it was still a problem. It was likely at least partially why the OnePlus 2, launched in July 2015, is generally regarded as the weakest of all the OnePlus phones.

Since the company didn’t expect to push over a million units of the OnePlus One, it likely didn’t expect a ton of media and industry scrutiny on its follow-up. Thus, the OnePlus 2 is essentially a subtly updated version of the OnePlus One, complete with the Sandstone back and a similar body shape.

The OnePlus 2 may be the weakest of all the OnePlus phones.

As one would expect, the OnePlus 2 came with the usual upgrades: the newest Snapdragon 800-series processor, a bigger battery, a better display, higher-grade cameras, a fingerprint sensor, more speakers, etc. However, the base model didn’t come with more RAM or more internal storage and also removed NFC support for some reason. To top it all off, the entry price for the phone went up to $329.

OnePlus also kept the invite system for the launch of the OnePlus 2, which this time backfired. Since many early adopters had only just gotten their hands on the OnePlus One after a long wait, they had no intention of going through the invite troubles again for the newest of the OnePlus phones.

Still, this didn’t stop the OnePlus 2 from selling well. By August of 2015, the company admitted it had received over two million reservations for the device. Even if only half of those reservations turned into sales (which is very likely), the OnePlus 2 probably outsold the OnePlus One.

Regardless, the company did learn it needed to change up the game if it was going to continue to grow.

OnePlus 2 fast facts:

The OnePlus 2 launched with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop and its final official update was Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.
OnePlus at one point promised it would deliver an update to the OnePlus 2 that would bring it Android 7 Nougat. However, it did not keep that promise.
The OnePlus 2 has the distinction of being the first of the OnePlus phones to have a physical alert slider. This popular feature has been on every single OnePlus phone since.
The codename for the OnePlus One was “bacon,” while the codename for the OnePlus 2 was much less creative: “oneplus2.” The next few OnePlus phones would go on to have boring codenames until the OnePlus 5 brought back the food-related monikers with “cheeseburger.”
In 2015, the price of the phone started at $329, or about $360 in 2020 dollars.

OnePlus X: The experiment

The OnePlus X

In the Fall of 2015, rumors were ramping up that OnePlus was going to imminently release a third smartphone (with the OnePlus 2 being the first that year). OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei downplayed the rumor by saying there would only be one flagship phone from OnePlus in 2015.

Enter the OnePlus X, which — true to Carl Pei’s word — is decidedly not a flagship phone. Released at the end of October 2015, the X was the first product from the company not geared as a premium device.

Related: OnePlus’ Carl Pei explains why the Nord is more than a OnePlus X successor

The OnePlus X had the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, the same chipset in 2014’s OnePlus One. It had 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and cut various corners in the hardware design to keep the price down. Essentially, the device was a reformatting of the One that the company could sell for even less cash — the OnePlus X started at $249, $50 less than the entry-level variant of the One.

Considering that the OnePlus 2 had only just been released — and only cost $70 more — and the OnePlus One was still available in many areas of the world, the OnePlus X had a difficult time finding a large audience. Although OnePlus never divulged any sales numbers for the X, we can infer that the phone didn’t do that well based on the fact that the “X” line never continued.

Still, history looks back very kindly on the OnePlus X. With the recent successes of phones like the Google Pixel 4a and the iPhone SE (2020), the OnePlus X was kind of ahead of its time. Now, with the launch of the OnePlus Nord, the idea behind the OnePlus X can live on in at least some capacity.

OnePlus X fast facts:

The OnePlus X launched with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop and its final official update was Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.
As with every one of the OnePlus phones thus far, you could only buy the OnePlus X with an invite code. However, within a few months after its launch, the company allowed full open sales of the device, which is another piece of evidence that the phone didn’t sell as well as the company had hoped.
There were 10,000 ceramic versions of the OnePlus X created. It had the same internals as the regular version but its premium build materials raised its price to $399. This didn’t make much sense as the more powerful OnePlus 2 started at $70 less.
The OnePlus X featured the alert slider, something the OnePlus One didn’t have. However, it also featured a micro-USB port, a downgrade compared to the USB-C port on the OnePlus 2.
In 2015, the price of the phone started at $249, or about $272 in 2020 dollars.

OnePlus 3: The return of the flagship killer

Although OnePlus had one bona fide hit smartphone under its belt with the OnePlus One, the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X failed to replicate the same love. While the OnePlus 2 likely sold better than the One, it didn’t see the same positivity from the media and OnePlus’ ravenous fanbase, and the OnePlus X was more of a one-off experiment than anything else.

Enter the OnePlus 3, the company’s first total rethinking of what a OnePlus smartphone looks, feels, and functions like. Taking some design cues from the incredibly popular HTC One M7 and One M8 from a few years prior, the OnePlus 3 had a classy-looking metal chassis, some sexy rounded corners, huge bumps in internal specs, and, possibly best of all, no invite system nonsense to hinder buyers from getting it.

The OnePlus 3 redefined what a OnePlus smartphone could be.

If the OnePlus 2 was a stumbling block and the OnePlus X was a fun little side project, the OnePlus 3 was the true follow-up to the OnePlus One: the return of the flagship killer.

OnePlus also used the OnePlus 3 to correct some of its earlier mistakes. It brought back NFC support and fixed up compatibility issues the OnePlus 2 saw with its USB-C port. It also enhanced the fingerprint scanner, which was a sore spot for users with the OnePlus 2.

One of the only huge criticisms of the device is that, for some reason, OnePlus decided to make the battery smaller than the one in the OnePlus 2. This was a curious move, but it wouldn’t take long for the company to fix that error (see the next section).

Sales numbers are, as usual, hard to come by with the OnePlus 3. Even if we had them, though, they wouldn’t tell the whole story since the device was discontinued only five months after its launch due to the release of the next phone on this list.