People have critics, who question them and ask them to stick to their principles or explain deviations. Companies have them too, and at one point of time, I was one such critic. I would review products, ponder on the philosophy behind them and wonder what the impact would be on the average customer. Those days are gone, but somewhere inside me, a self-critic still lives. Why else would I always want to justify shifting from one product to another? None of the people I know – my parents, my girlfriend, my co-workers – none of them are least bothered whether I move from one company to another. All they would see is what the quality of the device is, how well it can be handled and what the pricing is. And oh yes, how sexy it looks in your hand. Not for them are the complex debates on product placement and pricing, the competitions in the silicon industry or even the debates on the headphone jack (not yet anyway). So why do I write these articles (refer Transition to MacMania) in the first place? Well, somewhere that critic asks me to explain why I made a shift after passionately holding onto something (or some company) for an eternity. And so here we are again.
This time, the critic is wondering why I moved from Xiaomi to OnePlus. After all, for the past three odd years, I had been a manic fan of Xiaomi. I had cheered their arrival in India, lapped up their first two devices and when the time came for me to shift, I chose another Xiaomi device. Indeed, these phones are among the longest serving devices I’ve had in my lifetime. And this includes those student years when money was short and getting a cellphone involved a lot of lobbying with the parents. So why did I move to Oneplus, ostensibly Xioami’s biggest rival at the top of the Chinese OEM pile ?
To put things in proper perspective, this is not the first time I’ve used a Oneplus device. Back inearly 2016, when my daily driver was still the redoubtable Mi 3, I decided I’d use my first salary to get my dad a handset. Having heard of the greatness of Oneplus (and given away no less than three invites on the forums), I decided that the Oneplus X would a) be a great device and b) fit my budget.
The Oneplus X, which neither had a predecessor nor a successor, was a beautiful device. Golden with chamfered edges, the device sat like a lovely little tile in my hand, and my dad too was impressed by the design. All was hunky dory till he fired up the camera and took a few shots. I must mention here that my dad is a photography enthusiast and understands camera settings better than I do. This understanding caused him to give the OPX an X across the whole marksheet of utility. The images were passable but were nothing that justified the 17K price tag. Disappointed, I returned the OPX. Instead, he settled for a cheaper and on paper, far inferior Samsung Galaxy J7. He still uses it to this day and is satisfied with the camera.
Fast forward to October 2017, and I have no real cause to make a shift to a new handset. Sure, the Redmi Note 3 that I had purchased seemed to be aging a little, but it was aging gracefully. Having been part of the Weekly program almost since the time it was introduced in India, I had just received the MIUI 9 beta update. This added a few useful tweaks to an already useful UI, and made the icons and interface that little bit cooler. Really, I had no complaints and no reason to move to Oneplus, or any phone for that matter.
But in my mind, I’d kind of made up my mind not to go for another Xiaomi handset, regardless of when they came out with a new one. For one thing, I was tired of the substandard camera and the numerous pedestrian offerings that the mid-range phones provided. I’ll swear I wasn’t dissatisfied with the RN3, but honestly, having moved from a true flagship like the Mi 3, it was galling to have to settle for a mid-ranger. Circumstances had forced to me to choose it in mid-2016, and I was looking for a way to go back into the flagship category.
Unfortunately, the flagship category seemed to be something Mi really didn’t care about. They released the Mi 5, and then pretended they had never been a competitor in that segment. Oneplus ran away with the show there, while Xiaomi concentrated on the mid-range segment. Their Redmi series had really proved a showstopper, and perhaps that’s what persuaded them to keep the ambitions in check and the cash flowing.
Take for instance, the case of the Mi 6. Despite repeatedly being assured by Manu Jain, Hugo Barra and others that India was the most important international market (right after the domestic market, China), Indians were simply forgotten when the Mi 6 came out. If it had been released in India, I may well have been rocking a Mi 6 instead. More annoyingly, they didn’t release the Note series, nor the Mi Mix. In short, Xiaomi had an empty shelf in the 20K+ category while it was cramming devices into the sub-10K and 10K+ categories.
They sought to change it recently though, by releasing the Mi Mix 2. A more improved version of the “concept” device that was the Mi Mix, this bezel-less design was popular in its own way. Plus, it had the distinction of having a Snapdragon 835, meaning that once again, Xiaomi was returning to the charge in the premium segment. But it was a little too late, and deeply flawed at that.
For one thing, I really wasn’t looking forward to carrying an actual ceramic tile in my pocket. At 5.99”, it was well in the Mi Max 2 category, and if it hadn’t been for the bezel-less design, may simply have been a buffed up Mi Max 2. This was simply too large for me. The RN3, at 5.5”, had literally torn a hole in my pocket where it rubbed against the inner wall of the buses in which I travelled. I was looking for something thinner, even when I was resigned to accepting that no flagship in 2017 would be actually smaller.
Again, there was the obvious defect shared with the Mi 6 – lack of a headphone jack. One of the most controversial trends started by Apple with the iPhone 7, the lack of it meant that I had to depend almost exclusively on Bluetooth audio. While I had a decent pair of Plantronics headphones from way back in 2013, I didn’t really fancy losing the security mechanisms associated with having a wire connecting your ears and your device and verifying that you actually still had the phone with you while travelling in a crowded metro. In other words, the top of the line Mi Mix 2 was a no go.
Then there was the question of the camera. Obviously, the camera on the Mi Mix 2 was better than the nameless creature on the RN3. Yet it was not really top of the line to be honest. Moreover, it lacked the dual camera goodness of the other flagships since, to be honest, it really wasn’t a flagship. It was catering to a niche market of enthusiasts and others who wanted a large phablet. The Mi 6 was the real flagship, and the Mi Mix 2 was playing the flagship game with its hands tied. Naturally, it wasn’t faring well.
Finally, there was the pricing. Given that the Oneplus 5 had been announced (more on this in a moment), you’d expect the Mi Mix 2 to be competitively priced. Instead, Xiaomi went ahead with a 37,999 price tag, which was at par with the higher storage model of the OP5 but lost out in terms of RAM and camera.
Overall, it seemed Xiaomi had just been given a rude wake-up and they were trying to throw in whatever they could, except the best stuff!
All this considered, I still wasn’t planning on getting a new phone. However, I saw a rather tempting offer which would have given me the iPhone 6 for about 16K after exchange. Then I learnt that the device had a decent but HD display and no water protection. Move to the iPhone 6S and you have a bump of about 10K to about 26K. At that price point, you’d expect a current-gen flagship. So in the end, I decided to wait.
The Puja offers ended, and in the short window between Puja and Diwali offers, I saw an irresistible deal. The OnePlus 5 was on offer for 33K (its MSRP), but I was getting about 5800 off on my RN3. Not just that, there would be another 2K discount after a couple of months. All said, I would be getting a discount of almost 8K on a 33K device, bringing the effective price down to 25K. With no cost EMI on my credit card, this could be stretched into a year’s worth of somewhat lower than 3K payments per month.
I took it.
On some levels, it was not the brightest decision. For one thing, despite implementing Corning Gorilla Glass 5, Oneplus had shown up its manufacturing shoddiness when phones cracked due to moderate falls. Then, there was the question of water protection, which simply wasn’t there. It was water resistant, but not water resistant in the way the iPhone 6S was. Finally, I still hadn’t forgotten the earlier OnePlus fiasco.
But on other levels – a lot of levels – it made sense. Financially, it was the best bet I could get on the old device, given that it was already more than a year old. Further, I was looking for a flagship, and barring the almost last gen LG G6, there wasn’t a flagship in this price bracket. Thirdly, I wanted to have a good camera, and the OP5 was being marketed as such. Reviews were good, and the Sony IMX398 sensor sounded promising. It was anyhow better than the IMX268 being used on the Mi models. Lastly, it had such small but vital amenities like headphone jack and NFC.
So how do I feel about the purchase? To begin with, the device is a sleek beast. I intentionally chose the gold colour, and do not regret my decision one bit. The phone is incredibly thin and even when it is about the same size, the thinness has so far spared my jeans pockets. It feels great to hold, though it is a bit slippery like all metal unibody devices in the market today. Plus, it comes with a pre-applied screen guard. There’s no news on whether it is tempered glass, but it is definitely a small attention to detail that I appreciate very much.
Coming to the display, it is fantastic. The RN3 display was no pushover, but the colour gamut, saturation, details and viewing angles are fantastic. It’s not a QHD display, but then a QHD display on a device this small isn’t something I particularly fancy. The Snapdragon keeps everything snappy, and the generous RAM does its bit as well. I did face some lag when typing very long paragraphs, but deep down I’ve come to accept that no matter how great a phone you have, writing theses on handsets just isn’t my cup of tea.
Coming to the sound, I’d heard a lot about the fact that this unit has mono speakers compared to the by now standard stereo ones. I would agree, given that one of my earliest devices, a Samsung Guru unit, had mindblowing stereo speakers at the back. Back then a rear camera was a luxury, and this unit ditched the camera for the powerful speakers. I’d say the OP5 compares well to those hoary speakers. In fact, moving up from a device that had rear speakers that had to be cupped to produce sufficient sound, I actually had to turn down the volume a bit on the OP5 to allow my ears to adjust.
Finally, we come to the camera. Given how I was stunned by the quality of the images on the Mi 3, and was totally let down by those of the RN3, I’d say the ones of the OP5 are somewhere between. In technical terms, the images are far superior to even the Mi 3, but the novelty of great imagery that the Mi 3 had provided does not make for déjà vu. That said, the level of detail, the colour saturation and the interesting portrait mode (which is actually something I’d seen before on the Google Camera app), make for pretty high quality photography.
Equally impressive are the video capabilities. The unit uses Electronic Image Stabilization or EIS, which is a tad short of Optical IS or OIS, but does a fine job of smoothening out those bumpy steps you took while climbing the stairs to the tourist spots. While I can’t upload videos here, I can say that this, combined with the inclusion of 60fps fullHD recording, make videos look neat and almost professional. You can bump the video capture to 4K but given that I neither have a 4K display nor the space to fit in genuine 4K recordings (of concerts for instance), that setting is one that will have to wait for the future.
Oh….and lastly (again!), let me mention the battery. It is a climbdown from the 4000mAh one that sat inside the RN3, but at 3300mAh, it is no featherweight. It lasts the day if you keep the YouTube and gaming within check (ideally less than an hour of each), and don’t keep location services on all the time. Dash charging helps, though it should be remembered that the charger is about as large as the one on my MacBook Air, while the USB-C wire is, as of now, sui generis in my household. In short, dash charging only works its wonders if you have multiple dash chargers and USB-C cables, or are constantly charging the unit at home. Outside, the convenience of using a USB-B cable from a colleague or friend is lost on the altar of tech innovation, and frankly, it is one step of progress I’m not elated about.
So all this brings us back to the question – why did I make the change, and am I justified. I’d say that my grievances with Xiaomi were more than justified, and my appreciation of OP5 is realistic, even if I do get a bit starry-eyed at times. That said, I cannot deny that a sense of ennui was setting in from using the same skin of Android for so long. It was one of the reasons I’d actually contemplated shifting to the iPhone in the first place, and eventually, the Oxygen OS of OP5 (basically a lightly skinned stock Android). When a device and price offer came along that satisfied these criteria while proving usable (aka had a headphone jack) and offering good specs, I took it.