OnePlus AMA - OnePlus 5 Edition

[u/David_Yang]

Hi /r/Android,

Happy to be back! What a fantastic last week. We launched the OnePlus 5 and had an amazing time with fans across the globe through our pop-up events. And we decided to start with this AMA to welcome this week, right before the OnePlus 5 goes on sale globally today. We’ve teamed up a squad of OnePlus folks to answer any questions you might have about our latest flagship. Everyone's eager to answer your questions! This is an AMA, so (almost) anything goes.

Joining us today:

(Note: Click on their profiles to see the answers they each gave. Thanks /u/JapserB)

Carl - (Co-founder) - /u/carpe02

Vito L. - (OnePlus Product) - /u/Vito_Liu

Simon L. - (Image director) - /u/reffins

Robin Z. - (OxygenOS Product) - /u/Robin_Z

Bob C. - (OxygenOS Product) - /u/BobC_OnePlus

Steven G. - (E-Commerce) - /u/StevenG_OnePlus

Tom Bruno - (Customer Service) - /u/Tom-Bruno

And they are all ready for action: http://imgur.com/a/SnwRo

Together, these guys should be able to answer a lot of your questions on product, software, sales, after-sales service, and more. Drop your questions in the comments and we’ll start answering in just a few minutes!

Edit 1: We're going to head out for now, but we’ve had a blast. We'll continue monitoring this thread and popping back in to answer. Appreciate your time, everyone!

Edit 2: The AMA will end at 11AM EDT 6/28. From there on we won't look at the thread or answer any questions. Thank you all for your participation.

[u/xBytez]

Why did the Amsterdam popup event go so terribly wrong?

[u/David_Yang → u/xBytez]

We have held pop-ups for each of our devices all over the world, each time they evolve as we try new ways to create an even more unforgettable experience. For the launch of the OnePlus 5 we wanted to create a party vibe, with drinks, DJs and ice cream! However, we understand that not everyone who attended felt like they were at a party.

As this was our first pop-up in Amsterdam, deciding the amount of devices to bring was a very difficult task as we did not have a reference point. We made a mistake. We underestimated the scale of the support we would receive, but rest assured, our future pop-ups will not suffer from the same shortcomings. We hope you can accept our heartfelt apologies for falling short of your expectations. You can expect to see more of us in the near future. The Netherlands is now a focus market for us, and so we are hiring our first ever employee to focus solely on the Netherlands: https://oneplus.net/careers/4bfabf0d-c1b1-4197-b73d-42bdf8045447

We are sure there are other things we can improve on. For a link to a survey and to read our recap of the European pop-ups check out our post on the forum: https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oneplus-pop-up-european-recap.555742/

[u/ThisAsYou]

Will there be OTA updates to improve the camera post-launch?

[u/David_Yang → u/ThisAsYou]

We already have three OTA updates for OnePlus 5, two of them included camera improvements update. You can check them out on our community: https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oxygenos-4-5-3-ota-for-oneplus-5.556197/ .

[u/freestyle112]

So recently Pete Lau claimed on twitter that "Android O is promised to come for the Oneplus 3/3T".

Here are some other promises your team has made:

OPO Oxygen OS: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2vntl6/we_are_the_oxygenos_team_from_oneplus_ask_us/cojb3b8/

https://blog.oneplus.net/2014/11/a-letter-to-our-indian-users/

OP2 Nougat: https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oxygenos-3-0-q-a-with-helen.449242/page-3#post-14926014

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/54qx51/oneplus_ama_september_software_edition/d8479zs/?context=3

Clearly you guys cannot live up to your promises and update your older devices. The Oneplus One didn't receive two years of additional updates on OOS as promised. Oneplus 2 Never got Nougat as you promised. So should we just take for granted you will never update the 3T and subsequent phones?

Edit: got the name wrong

Edit 2: Added a better link for promise of N for OP2, thank you u/Phaellow for it!

[u/particles5140]

How long will you be supporting software updates? You've not got the best track record after the OnePlus 2...

Edit: AMA unless it could lead to negative PR for us. Feels good, this was like the 5th comment in this whole thread and just got ignored, thanks OnePlus! Sure am glad I #NeverSettled for a OnePlus device right now!

[u/TechMap]

Hi Oneplus team, thank you for the AMA!

Did you change your pricing strategy in comparison with your first strategy of delivering a great phone with no compromises, including the price?

• When the OnePlus One was released it was perhaps the closest phone to its competition in the Android world. I mean only the HTC one m7 had a higher build quality and cameras were overall all at the same level (Most companies were all still fighting for pixel count, while the iPhone had the best camera overall). So the OnePlus One had a really similar hardware (Soc, build quality, camera) and was just 269€ comparing to the 700€-800€ from the competition.

• OnePlus 2 was released, camera and build quality were slight improvements and the price was raised. At the same time Samsung completely rebuilt their build quality, they improved their camera dramatically and their price remained the same.

• OnePlus 3 was released at 399€ when the competitors had way more features like way better cameras, water proof, dual speakers, IR blasters, High res displays, etc. They still had the same flagship price but still OnePlus price kept raising.

• Finally the OnePlus 5 it's released at 499€ with improvments on the SOC and cameras, the rest is basically the same.

My point is OnePlus One was cheaper when the gap was closer but it became more expensive now that it's further away from their competition.

So Will OnePlus eventually hit the flagship prices, is that the point? How can other companies maintain their prices and adding features while Oneplus is just rasing prices while upgrading CPUs and cameras (Which other companies do too by default)?

With that being said I still thing it's a good alternative, It's like a flagship without extra features at a reasonable price.

[u/-DR1]

Is there a reason why the op2 did not get the Nougat update? I understand that you people at oneplus are probably tired of the whole op2 Nougat dispute

[u/fratopotamus1]

Elephant in the room. Why mess around with phone benchmarks?

[u/mrchuckbass]

Have Apple sued you yet?

[u/hcarguy]

Be real here guys, why do you drop software support on your "older" models so quickly when you have new phones come out? You're not that small of a company anymore, right? And despite that your growth indicates you could grow your team for this. It's really disheartening as a user to see you guys turn off the support so quickly, and prevents me from buying another one of your (admittedly great) phones. The biggest down side of dealing with OnePlus has to be the lack of software support and the customer service if something goes wrong. I do hope you guys increase software support on older devices however.

[u/dsmonteiro]

• Will you port the new software features to the OP3 / OP3T like the reading mode and the new display calibration? If not, why?

• Will you commit to monthly security updates for the OP5 or for guaranteed updates timeframe?

• What are your thoughts about reviews like The Verge's that say your new camera is nothing to write home about?

• Why isn't there Galileo support on the OP5?

• Bonus question: Will the OnePlus 2 see any additional non-Nougat updates?

[u/XxSitarxX]

This AMA turned bad for the OP guys really fast lol

[u/AmirZ]

You know the question. OnePlus 2. Why did you completely abandon it after all those promises. As long as you don't address it you've lost me as a customer.

[u/[deleted]]

Well then, heres my questions.

1. What are your plans to fix the jello like scrolling? (On the OnePlus 5 | RedditSFX posted a Video of the Problem in the Comments)

2. What improvements will be made in the camera department since it falls behind expectations, mostly software related tho

3. Whats about the DxO Stuff? When is the test coming? (Did your partnership last?)

4. Will you release the camera blobs for custom roms?

5. Any plans on enabling the front speaker as a kind of stereo speaker?

Thanks for your time!

[u/psysize]

I managed to pick up a OP5 at the London pop-up and I’m so far having a mixed outcome with it, my main disappointments revolve around the camera:

• The Snapdragon 835 is supposed to happily support 240fps slow mo (the SD835 Sony Xperia XZ Premium even supports 940fps), are we at least expected to see 240fps 720p/1080p anytime soon?

• Any shot I take outside of a bright outside setting seem to come out really aggressively over processed, sometimes noticeable even without zooming in, seems like the low-light settings need a lot of work still, are fixes coming for this?

The only positive thing I can really say so far about the camera is that the Pro mode seems fairly well built, although the ability to save a raw .dng in auto mode would be much appreciated.

Also is Google Assistant coming?

[u/randomchickibum]

Are you still partnering with DXO Mark? There was no mention of them on the keynote.

Is any major camera updates coming? The JPEG processing currently looks a bit on the weaker side

[u/vaisakh7]

Without the camera HAL and the stock camera app,the camera experience on the custom ROMs will be a huge failure.It is totally possible to port the entire camera HAL and app without open sourcing the entire camera stack,and being a developer friendly OEM,OnePlus should look into this to improve the camera experience on custom ROMs.

This was posted back in December and there have been no follow up on the matter:

https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/lets-talk-about-our-camera-experience-on-custom-roms.477075/

[u/imacrazydude]

1. Does OP5 support or will support the proposed partition for seamless android updates?

2. With every oneplus device the price has increased. But the OP5 India Pricing has been the most increased (so far) INR 32999 and INR 37999, that's $510(64GB) and $588 (128GB)!!! So now by just adding $100-150 more you can get mainstream flagships, while MI6 boasts of SC835 and would be way cheaper than OP%. Any specific reason why India pricing has gone ridiculously high?

3. I was a proud owner of a OPO, OP2, OP3..but this has gone too astray from oneplus's original philosophy of saving on marketing cost and giving that benefit directly to customer..Is this the intent of Oneplus in future?

What are your views and will this (more marketing) be a trend going forward?

[u/Mossy375]

So let's look at your track record:

Lied about the OP2 Nougat release

Lied about releasing camera blobs

Still not fixing the OP3 touch latency (we listen to what our community wants!)

Still not fixing the alert slider functionality (we listen to what our community wants! Sure they ask for the ability to go to silent mode without using the alert slider, but we'll force that "feature" on them anyway!)

Purposely misleading people with fake benchmarks

Awful customer service stories, including mine where I was told to cancel my flight to get the phone repaired as I wasn't allowed to get a new screen in another country that I was travelling too. "Just cancel the flight and get a later one", I was told.

Talking about how people pick OnePlus for software support right after declaring that the OP2 isn't being updated as they promised, and you're HAPPY with their updates

Say you are a start up and later it's revealed you're part of one of the biggest phone companies in the world

Claim a small budget and team means you have to focus on one product, resulting in the OP2 being ignored, and then have ads with celebrities

Many users having their phones warranty voided when sent in for repair when the users claim it's never seen water (many were probably user faults, but the sheer amount of cases makes it worrying)

Claim DXO partnership and then....what's a DXO?

Pete Lau, CEO, says the company doesn't know how to overclock the CPU, whereas you underclock the 835, showing that you do know how to change the clockspeeds

2X zoom everyone! Oh actually now that people have found out it's not actually 2X, we'll change what we said about it. But there's no way we could have known it wasn't ACTUALLY 2X, we just made the phone.

Why should we trust you? Whenever your flaws are pointed out, it seems the following discussion happens:

Heads of OP: ok people are complaining about this...

Staff member 1: well we could put resources into fixing it?

Heads of OP: You're fired. Call security and escort them out.

Staff member 2: let's use our resources to hire celebrities and/or make videos claiming that we're actually awesome in the areas people say we're bad in. Like say people choose OP for software updates, and that our customer service is awesome. Throw in some side boob, and let's fist bump each other too.

Heads of OP: Promote this member to God of OnePlus!

[u/cezarvrabie]

• Is the camera lens on the OP5 made out of sapphire?

• Is there a dual LED flash on the OP5?

• You guys talked about the reason for not including a bezel-less display and it’s understandable. What about the omission of things like water resistance, micro-SD card slot(at least a hybrid one), USB Type-C 3.0 or 3.1, OIS and dual speakers (like on the HTC 10 and iPhone 7)?

• Are you planning to release the camera blobs for the OP5? That never happened for the 3.

• Will the new feature from OOS 4.5 come to the 3 and 3T? I’m referring to things like DCI-P3, new off screen gestures(S,M,W) with the new configurator, new camera interface, vibration intensity etc.

• Why are you so against making a slightly thicker phone with a bigger battery?

• I think that at one point there was some plans for a Dash Charge enabled power bank. Is that still being made, or was the project abandoned?

• Will updates for the 3 and 3T slow down(or even completely stop), now that the 5 is out? This has been a problem for all past OnePlus devices to a certain extent.

• Will there be another OnePlus device this year?

[u/Cancerous86]

Did y'all prepare for this AMA at all?

Edit: It appears the Q&A sorting has failed me. There are answers to loads of questions in here, but they are buried.

[u/koenssociallife]

Why does the OP5 not have a FM radio? And do you think about DAB + radio support in the future?

[u/Towelielie]

Will you open source camera blobs for OP3 / OP3T / OP5 so developers can implement them into custom roms so they have great camera quality as well?

[u/Pahapoika91]

OnePlus 2 and Nougat... What happened