OnePlus does not make Android phones for a long time, but during the four years that exist, they always come with problems. The cherry on the cake: a hack that targeted the company's customers' credit cards. Could it be time to stop trusting a company with such low standards?
What is OnePlus?
Founded four years ago—at the end of 2013—OnePlus is a subsidiary of Chinese electronics manufacturer Oppo. The company’s original idea was admirable: “to make smartphones with high-end components and features without high prices.”
But it seems the company has taken that back.
For the most part, OnePlus makes good smartphones. They’re packed with great hardware and generally get good reviews. But the problem isn’t the phones, it’s the company itself.
April 2014
OnePlus’ first phone (the OnePlus One) was released in April 2014, just four months after the company was founded. It’s a good year, but it also marks the beginning of a long list of really questionable decisions by the company.
In an effort to get the public excited about their first smartphone, OnePlus launched an unprecedented campaign, called “Smash the Past,” in which the company asked users to smash their current smartphones. It doesn’t sound bad, but it gets worse.
Users had to submit an application to participate in the program, telling the company how they would break their phones. After being selected, they had to break their phones in the way they described, and then they could buy a OnePlus One for a dollar.
The list of phones was limited. You had to break a high-end smartphone such as: iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Nexus 5, or Moto X.
What happened: people misunderstood, because of course they broke their devices. Many broke their phones, but before they were selected, and before the contest started. This could be attributed to people not reading or understanding, but the whole thing could have been avoided if OnePlus had not started such a campaign.
Telling people to break their phones is not the best idea, as the devices are full of chemicals, which in the worst case can cause explosions. Not only was it a stupid idea, it was also a dangerous one.
Due to the backlash, the company tried to change the campaign, later allowing contest winners to donate their old phones instead of breaking them.
After that, one would think the company had learned its lesson.
April / May 2014:
The OnePlus One was initially available only through an invite-only system. It was implemented to combat limited availability at launch, but it made things very complicated.
To get an invite, customers had to go through a series of “flaming hoops” of contests. And all to buy a phone. Once they bought a phone, those customers also had a limited number of invites they could give to friends or family. But if you were one of the lucky ones who got invites, you had to use them within the first 24 hours or you’d lose them.
Okay, lack of stock but to use an invitation system to “allow” the audience to give its money, is somewhat arrogant, especially for a company that has no history.
May 2014
Shortly after the OnePlus One was released, some users complained about yellowing screens. The company claimed that the yellowing screen was not a “quality issue and is not covered under warranty.”
Given the recent issues with Pixel 2 XL screens and a similar response from Google, I don’t see this as an unusual reaction. But Google did extend the Pixel 2 warranty to two years, so at least there was a response.
I think users who had this issue had every right to be upset, and the company should have done a lot more to address it. And OK, even if it’s not a “quality issue,” shouldn’t the screen issue have at least been investigated?
August 2014
It might be the smallest contest in OnePlus’ history. It started with an informal women-only campaign called “Ladies First” in August 2014.
The idea was this: women (and only women) would place the OnePlus logo on their bodies or on a piece of paper, and then take a photo that they would upload to the OnePlus forum. The photos would then be voted on by forum members—mostly men—and the top 50 would win a free OnePlus t-shirt and an invitation to buy the phone.
If you thought the “Smash the Past” campaign was stupid before, it only took the company four months to make it even worse. Quite sexist, the ladies-only campaign faced a lot of backlash upon its announcement, so much so that the company canceled it within hours. The company claimed at the time that it was a “very misguided effort by a few individual employees.”
November 2014 – April 2015
The OnePlus One ran Cyanogen OS – a custom fork of Android that was once the king of custom ROMs. At the time, the founders of CyanogenMod tried to monetize the ROM’s fame by creating a company: Cyanogen, Inc. This company was responsible for building the One’s operating system.
This is one of the things that made the OnePlus One a lot more appealing than stock Android. But it later turned into a nightmare for OnePlus.
While there was no fault of OnePlus itself, Cyanogen, Inc. told the company in November 2014 that it had entered into an exclusive deal with Micromax to produce the operating system for an upcoming series of phones that would be released in India. The decision came at a bad time for OnePlus, as it led to a temporary ban on the import and sale of the OnePlus One in India. The ban was lifted a week later, as OnePlus decided to release its own custom version of Android called Oxygen OS.
This was the beginning of the end for OnePlus and Cyanogen, but it took about six months for the relationship to finally end. The two companies had a lot of problems, with Cyanogen claiming that OnePlus used the Cyanogen name to gain popularity, which may not be true, but I'm sure it didn't hurt OnePlus's recognition.
The real pain, however, was for users who bought the phone because it ran Cyanogen OS, and the partnership ended a year later. Compared to Cyanogen, OxygenOS was less customizable, but it still had many of the Android elements.
This was the end of a very difficult first year for a new company. Most small businesses wouldn’t have survived all the backlash and adversity in such a short period of time, but OnePlus did.
August 2015: OnePlus 2
Like most companies with successful smartphones, the company followed up the One with… the clever OnePlus 2.
The OnePlus 2 launched without NFC (near field communication) – a feature that was considered essential for top-of-the-line phones – and without wireless charging. This caused a backlash in the Android community, although OnePlus claimed that there weren’t enough OnePlus owners using NFC to justify not adopting it.
Also, as with the One, the 2 again launched with an invitation system. While there wasn’t some stupid contest like with the One, the 2 had issues with the invitation and sales system, which meant that users couldn’t buy the phone.
Initially, OnePlus promised a new and improved invitation system, with more invitations. That never happened.
November 2015
OnePlus, in addition to its smartphones, offers accessories like USB-C cables and USB-C to Micro-USB adapters. But both were confirmed to not be compliant with USB-C standards by veteran Google engineer and USB-C expert Bensen Leung. In short, using the cable or adapter had the potential to fry the power supply thanks to their resistors and construction.
Once again, OnePlus apologized for the mistake and offered refunds, but only for customers who purchased the USB-C cable, and not the USB-C to Micro-USB adapter (which was just as bad as the cable). It also noted that both the cable and adapter were safe to use with the OnePlus 2… and not with other phones.
June 2016
On almost any Android phone, when you check for an operating system update, the phone contacts the manufacturer’s servers to see if there’s any new software available. Quite common.
On the OnePlus 3, the phone also sent the IMEI – a number that uniquely identifies that phone – over an unencrypted connection. This means that a value that can link your phone to you is sent over an open connection to OnePlus’ servers.
To make this even more interesting, it was also discovered that a valid IMEI wasn’t necessary for the device to receive any updates. To do this, a user on the OnePlus forums sent a test request to OnePlus’ update server with an unusable IMEI and got the update.
January 2017
Benchmark scores are a hot topic for all devices.
With that in mind, the benchmark scores on the OnePlus 3t were rigged to be higher than their actual performance. OnePlus apparently used specific apps to get the highest scores.
It's also worth noting that other manufacturers have been found guilty of the same behavior: Samsung, HTC, Sony, and LG were all found doing the same thing in 2013.
June 2017
After being caught cheating on benchmarks with the OnePlus 3t, you could say the company was exposed and made up its mind. But OnePlus has been caught again maximizing benchmark scores on the OnePlus 5.
This time the scores were boosted by 5%. There’s an incredibly detailed analysis on the subject from XDA, and I’d recommend you take a look.
June 2017
OnePlus 5 users noticed an occasional glitch when scrolling on the phone, but it wasn't clear why it was happening. It was soon discovered why: the screen was placed upside down. On purpose.
Because it was upside down, the screen would refresh from the bottom up, causing some interesting issues when scrolling. It didn't seem to affect all units, but it was pretty obvious on the ones that did.
You may be wondering why the screen was intentionally placed upside down. The XDA forum has the answer.
[su_box title=”XDA forum” box_color=”#063f00″ title_color=”#ffffff” radius=”0″] If you'll take a look back at any of the thorough teardowns of the smartphone, you may notice that the display controller IC is located at the bottom. In order to compensate for the module's placement, OnePlus flipped the display panel so the display cable would easily reach the motherboard and none of these components would interfere with other elements at the top of the device. But why would they need to do all this in the first place?
Take a look at what is placed at the top of the smartphone – the dual camera and some antennas. Like with any decision involving where to place components in a smartphone, it likely came down to space considerations. With limited space, the company had to decide where to place each component so everything would fit. Since the dual lens camera, which is new to the OnePlus line-up, takes up more space than a single lens camera it is possible the company moved the motherboard – and hence flipped the display panel – in order to accommodate the new camera module.[/su_box]
July 2017
In 2017, a OnePlus 5 owner saw a building on fire, tried to call 911, and his device rebooted twice.
It turns out that the OnePlus 5 had a memory flaw that forced it to reboot in case someone wanted to contact emergency services. If there was another phone nearby, all OK, but what if there wasn't? Even phones without a SIM card are supposed to be able to make emergency calls.
Luckily, the company quickly released a fix.
October 2017
In October 2017, it was revealed that OxygenOS was collecting data about device usage, a fairly common practice among smartphone manufacturers. But within that data was the device’s serial number, meaning that the user’s identity could be linked to that data.
The company claimed that it was sending two separate sets of data – one for device usage and analytics data, and another with device information (serial number) for “better after-sales service.” It also noted that all the data was transferred over HTTPS for security.
The real issue here is that OnePlus was doing all of this without users’ consent. It was taking users’ data and sending it to the company’s servers without the users’ consent.
Just a few days after this data collection was revealed, OnePlus responded by stating that it was limiting the amount of data it was collecting.
November 2017
Just a month after OnePlus was discovered collecting user data without permission, another vulnerability was found that allowed many OnePlus phones to be used without unlocking the bootloader, via a backdoor called EngineerMode.
OnePlus claimed that the vulnerability is not that big of a deal. Security researchers from NowSecure took a closer look at the issue and provided a more in-depth explanation of the bug. XDA also has a good description of how EngineerMode works and how it affects the company’s devices.
Essentially, an attacker would need physical access to the device to easily gain root access and execute malicious code.
EngineerMode was initially thought to be a Qualcomm app, but after investigation, Qualcomm claimed that it was not its own. OnePlus quickly removed EngineerMode.
January 2018
In January 2018, OnePlus officially announced a massive breach in which information from 40,000 customers' credit cards was leaked. The actual breach occurred between November 2017 and January 2018, so OnePlus eventually realized what was happening and stopped credit card transactions.
Why do you keep giving money to this company?
Too many issues. It started with the not-so-smart decisions of a new company, continued with selling USB-C cables that could literally destroy users' devices. We've reported a few times about collecting data from users (without permission), rebooting phones during 911 calls, and security holes that allowed easy root access.
Stolen credit card information is a very big issue in itself, and it took more than two months to catch on.
Of course, none of these issues alone are the end of the world. In fact, some of these have happened to other companies we love and trust.
But all of these, in the four years of the company's existence, show us that OnePlus is a company that consistently shows a lack of responsibility towards its customers.
If you're looking for good phones at a good price, there are other options.
Perhaps OnePlus will improve over time, but at this point, we can't recommend buying from the company until they reconsider their stance and prove they can sustain it in the long term, a behavior that can build trust.
Originally published by: HTG
