Six years of OnePlus - The biggest hits (and misses) in its short history - Android

It might be hard to believe, but today is the sixth anniversary of OnePlus’ founding. Former Oppo vice president Pete Lau and former Oppo international markets manager Carl Pei founded the company on December 16, 2013. On the occasion of OnePlus’ birthday, we thought we would go over the major milestones — both positive and negative — the company has seen in the past six years.

To say that OnePlus has disrupted the smartphone industry would be an understatement. In six years, the brand has gone from a tiny company with one device to a major global player in the premium smartphone market in India and commands a mighty presence in other parts of the world. It’s been able to do all this while keeping its products relatively cheap as compared to most of the competition and without diluting its brand value.

Related: OnePlus 8 Pro: All the rumors in one place

However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for OnePlus. There have been a few missteps along the way such as marketing snafus and even entire products that probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day. But the company soldiers on.

On OnePlus’ birthday, let’s take a look at the six biggest hits (and six biggest misses) the company’s had over the past six years.

Hit #1: The OnePlus One

What can be said about the OnePlus One that hasn’t already been said? The One is frequently cited as one of the best smartphones of all time, with folks the world over still using it to this day as their daily driver.

When the One dropped in 2014 (only four months after OnePlus’ birthday), it offered almost all the major specs one would expect from a flagship smartphone but at around half the price. Sure, it didn’t come with the greatest camera nor did it have the latest features such as a 1440p display or a fingerprint scanner, but it was fast, durable, and attractive.

Related: From OnePlus 6T to OnePlus One: A week with a five-year-old phone

Of course, the invitation system was frustrating for buyers and OnePlus did a pretty poor job when it comes to customer support, but the One was a bonafide hit for the brand. Coming right out of the gate with a smash like the OnePlus One was a big win for the company and set the stage for its future success.

Hit #2: Oxygen OS

The OnePlus One shipped with Cyanogen OS, a commercial version of the popular Android fork known as CyanogenMod. We’re going to get into the troubles with Cyanogen Inc. later, but we can be thankful for Cyanogen OS for one simple reason: it forced OnePlus to deliver us Oxygen OS.

When things at Cyanogen were getting messy, OnePlus knew it needed to ditch the brand for future devices. In 2015, it started developing its own close-to-stock Android skin which gained the name Oxygen OS after OnePlus held a naming contest online. Shortly before the second OnePlus birthday, the company pushed out Oxygen OS as an optional upgrade for the OnePlus One.

Related: Oxygen OS: Six features you need to know about

At first, Oxygen OS was very close to stock Android with only a handful of additional features. Over time, though, OnePlus has made the skin into one of the best on the market. It’s a mostly bloat-free experience with tons of customization features and a snappy, beautiful UI.

Oxygen OS is so beloved by OnePlus fans that many refuse to switch brands simply because they don’t want to deal with an anemic stock Android experience or be burdened by the bloated messes of many other OEM skins.

Hit #3: The OnePlus 3T

Although the OnePlus One will always have a special spot on the list of historically important Android smartphones, the OnePlus 3T will likely be remembered as the best device OnePlus has ever offered.

Initially, fan reaction to the OnePlus 3T — released right before the third OnePlus birthday, barely six months after the OnePlus 3 — was mixed. On one hand, fans liked the idea of a slightly better OnePlus phone on offer, but those who had just forked out for the OnePlus 3 felt a pang of regret on not knowing that a better choice was going to come so soon.

Related: OnePlus 3 and 3T ride off into the sunset with final update

However, any misgivings were quickly forgotten once people started to use the OnePlus 3T. Keeping the same sleek, metal design of the OnePlus 3, the 3T bumped up the processor, battery, and front-facing camera specs, while also adding a new internal storage option of 128GB.

In fact, OnePlus continued to support the OnePlus 3T all the way up until this year, with the device receiving a final update to Android 9 Pie. For the record that’s a whopping four different Android versions launched for this one device (Marshmallow, Nougat, Oreo, and Pie).

Hit #4: Dash (and later Warp) Charge

OnePlus fans love to complain about the lack of wireless charging on any OnePlus smartphone so far. When pressed on this, OnePlus representatives always use the same excuse: fast wired charging is far better than wireless charging.

While that is an example of the company telling fans what they should or shouldn’t want (which we’ll get to later), it’s not an invalid claim. Fast wired charging is incredibly helpful, and OnePlus’ decision to focus on that over slow wireless charging was likely the right move.

Related: How fast charging really works

When OnePlus debuted Dash Charge — its proprietary fast-charging system it licensed from Oppo — with the OnePlus 3, it promised “a day’s power in half-an-hour.” It boasted you could charge the OnePlus 3 from 0% to 60% in about 30 minutes.

This is much more useful to the average smartphone user than wireless charging, especially when you take into consideration that even the fastest wireless systems on the market today are still at around half the speed.

Eventually, OnePlus got into a trademark dispute in the EU over the Dash Charge name and subsequently rebranded it as Warp Charge. But the system is just as good and has only become more powerful over time, with the OnePlus 7T capable of going from 0% battery to 50% in just 20 minutes.

Hit #5: Top dog in India

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Right around the fifth OnePlus birthday, the company received some great news: according to Counterpoint Research, OnePlus had become the highest-selling premium smartphone brand in India.

You read that correctly. That means OnePlus sells more premium smartphones in India than Samsung, Apple, Huawei, or any other smartphone manufacturer around the world. With India being one of the biggest and fastest-developing smartphone markets on the planet, this achievement is a big deal.

Related: OnePlus opens new R&D center in India: Here’s everything you need to know

Incredibly, OnePlus has been able to hold on to its status as India’s top dog for all of this year. Meanwhile, its brand recognition and market share are increasing in many other parts of the world, including the UK, the US, and Europe. But this achievement in India will always be one of the company’s most significant milestones.

Hit #6: The OnePlus 7 Pro

Earlier this year, OnePlus launched a new kind of OnePlus device: a “Pro” model. Up until then, the company only released a primary flagship and then a “T” upgrade model, with the notable exception of the budget-minded OnePlus X. The OnePlus 7 Pro, in that sense, was the first of its kind.

Although the idea of OnePlus releasing a device that was sure to be even more expensive than the OnePlus 6T — which was its most expensive phone ever when it landed shortly before the fifth OnePlus birthday — the 7 Pro more than earned its regard as one of the best smartphones of 2019.

Related: OnePlus 7 Pro review: Bigger and brighter, but is it better?

Not only was the phone beautiful and a technical marvel, but it also featured the debut of one of the industry’s biggest hits of the year: the 90Hz display refresh rate, which OnePlus markets as Fluid AMOLED. It also was the debut of the UFS 3.0 storage standard in a smartphone as well as the first device to hit North America with a pop-up selfie camera.

If nothing else, the OnePlus 7 Pro is a prime example of OnePlus transitioning from a company that delivers modern flagships at low prices to a company that is the first-to-market with innovative features.

Miss #1: “Smash The Past” and “Ladies First”

You’ve got to hand it to OnePlus: the company has no problem with taking risks when it comes to marketing. Between its bizarre TV ads and interesting attempts at viral marketing, OnePlus is a company that has always thought outside the box between its founding and today, the sixth OnePlus birthday.

However, two of its early marketing attempts backfired horribly for the company. The first was called “Smash The Past,” which came out right around the release of the OnePlus One. The marketing stunt encouraged users to film themselves literally smashing their current smartphone to bits in exchange for buying the One for just $1.00. Unfortunately, people misunderstood how the promotion worked and hopefuls with no chance of winning ended up smashing their phones in error. In the end, only 100 people out of the 140,000 entrants got a One for a buck.

Related: Ahead of the OnePlus ‘Smash the Past’ contest, people are already murdering innocent smartphones

Not long after the misfire of the “Smash The Past” campaign, OnePlus debuted another ill-advised campaign called “Ladies First.” The campaign encouraged women on the OnePlus community forums to post a photo of themselves alongside a OnePlus logo which could possibly have netted them an invite to buy the OnePlus One. Non-participants (read: mostly males) on the forums could then “Like” these photos. I’m sure you can already tell how this turned out.

Miss #2: Launching with Cyanogen OS

CyanogenMod — which eventually morphed into Lineage OS — was a custom Android ROM you could download and install on your unlocked smartphone. Since it was beloved by the custom ROM community, fans got incredibly excited when OnePlus revealed the OnePlus One would have Cyanogen OS (a commercial version of CyanogenMod) pre-loaded.

This not only represented a huge win for Cyanogen Inc., the company behind Cyanogen OS, but also for the custom ROM community in general. Unfortunately, things took a turn pretty quickly.

Cyanogen Inc. was plagued with poor leadership that made some truly bad decisions. One of the biggest of these blunders was signing a deal with a OnePlus competitor that would see Cyanogen OS as the exclusive operating system on Indian handsets from this competitor. At the time, this was pretty much universally seen as Cyanogen screwing over OnePlus.

Related: Cyanogen: Where did it go wrong?

Of course, the silver lining here is that th