HIGHLIGHTS
Here are 1+49 facts that you may not know about OnePlus
Some of these facts are rather interesting
Read on to find out more about OnePlus
There is no doubt that OnePlus is one of the most successful smartphone companies in the world. The OnePlus project started with its ‘flagship killer’ OnePlus One in 2014 and has since become a flagship smartphone brand. In addition to smartphones, the company has launched earphones, TVs and more to expand its product portfolio. Today we will take a look at 50 fun facts about OnePlus and their journey.
Naming & Branding
1. The company’s name is OnePlus which means that it’s one step ahead of its competitors.
2. In the name OnePlus, ‘One’ stands for the user and ‘Plus’ means he will keep on recommending it to others.
3. The Chinese name for OnePlus is pronounced as Yi Jia Yi, which is similar to a word pronounced “a family”
4. Many phone companies like Samsung and Apple use S line/series to name their newer model, OnePlus just played smart by using T(S+1=T) i.e the next alphabet after S, and plus the company is OnePlus.
5. The company’s motto “Never Settle” is an ideology that comes from the fact that users shouldn’t have to settle for a substandard phone just because they do not have a massive budget to upgrade. “We will create a more beautiful and higher quality product,” Lau says. “We will never be different just for the sake of being different. Everything done has to improve the actual user experience in day-to-day use We both just want to create the best product”
Founding of OnePlus
6. The company started as a coffee-table conversation in August 2013 between a bunch of early OnePlus employees—at the time, just friends. We had our phones on the table and we noticed that everyone was using an iPhone. This was surprising—some of us were working at other smartphone manufacturers making Android phones. So we asked ourselves, “Why do people around this table all use iPhones?”
7. At first, there were only a few members in OnePlus. Even a team leader would go to the warehouse to help pack the phones before the open sales.
8. OnePlus is currently majority-owned by Oppo as its only shareholder, which is a subsidiary of BBK Electronics along with Vivo and Realme. However, both OnePlus and Oppo deny OnePlus is a subsidiary and maintain they are independent companies, although OnePlus confirmed it uses Oppo’s manufacturing line and shares part of the supply chain resources with Oppo.
9. Pete Lau was formerly the vice-president of Oppo and is rejoining Oppo as the Chief Product Experience Officer while maintaining his role as CEO of OnePlus
OnePlus One
10. When OnePlus One was launched, the company aimed at selling 30,000 units but it blew past all expectations and sold 1.5 million units.
11. OnePlus did not intend to make a profit for its first two years and cut down its marketing expenses by selling the OnePlus One directly to consumers, thereby avoiding the need to increase the recommended retail price that would be necessary if they were to sell through a retailer.
12. OnePlus set up the invite system in place for ordering the OnePlus One, which was the only way to get the affordable handset. Customers who received an invite to purchase a OnePlus One had 24 hours to purchase the handset or it would expire. However, if the user gave away the invite it would last up to one or two weeks longer.
13. OnePlus originally didn’t plan to launch in India but seeing the number of OnePlus One that shipping to India, they decided to change their focus to cater to the Indian market.
Hydrogen OS
14. On 16 December 2014, The Supreme Court of India and Delhi High Court banned the import and sale of OnePlus One phones following a lawsuit by Micromax alleging it has exclusivity for shipping phones with Cyanogen OS software in India. On 21 December 2014, the ban was lifted. The device continues to be shipped with Cyanogen OS; however, a customized version of Android specially designed by OnePlus and named OxygenOS has been released, allowing later OnePlus devices to be sold in India.
15. On the bright side, OnePlus partnered with WWF India and their “Adopt a Tree” campaign on the occasion of completing 1500 days of OxygenOS on Sept 13 2019, and planted a tree for every tweet with #OxygenOS.
16 There is also another version of the OS designed specifically for the Chinese home market called HydrogenOS.
Marketing ‘Blunders’ & Successes
17. OnePlus had unique ways to grab attention. They launched a campaign contest called "Smash the Past", but it didn’t end well. The challenge was for users to smash their old smartphone on the video to show how much they deserve to get a new OnePlus smartphone for just $1. OnePlus quickly retracted the smashing rule, instead of allowing the device to be recycled instead of broken.
18. OnePlus was also caught invading users’ privacy by sending data like phone numbers, MAC addresses, mobile network(s) names as well as wireless network identifying numbers, his phone’s serial number, and data on what apps were being used and when. back to servers in China. The issue was found to affect the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus 3 series smartphones but to this date, OxygenOS on OnePlus phones have the “join our user experience program” toggle inside settings.
19. In what might be the shortest contest in OnePlus history, the ill-conceived campaign just for women called “Ladies First” was launched in August 2014. It involved ladies drawing the OnePlus logo on their body and taking a picture of themselves and uploading it to be judged on the OnePlus forum. This campaign was shut down in a matter of hours due to the backlash that it received from offended consumers.
20. It cheated on benchmark testing (several times) and claims its actions weren't cheating. XDA accuses OnePlus 5 of manipulating benchmark scores to gain a 5% performance boost. All little cores were affected and kept at 1.9GHz, and it was through that cheat that OnePlus achieved some of the highest GeekBench scores of a Snapdragon 835.
21. It mounted the OnePlus 5 screen upside-down, leading to an unfortunate jelly scrolling effect.
22. Another story we won't soon forget is the update of the OnePlus 5T to play HD content: which you couldn’t install yourself. The smartphone had to be sent to the manufacturer because OnePlus says that "due to security processes". To do this, OnePlus needs your smartphone. OnePlus covers the costs of sending and receiving and promises that your beloved smartphone will not be out on the road for more than five working days. However, this does not apply to OnePlus customers living outside North America, India, China and Europe.
23. More recently, OnePlus 8 Pro camera could look through clothes! The camera of the device featured a special colour filter lens which could look through thin surfaces like clothes and plastic. Later, this feature was temporarily disabled in an update and was brought back in a highly nerfed fashion.
Firsts
24. OnePlus One was one of the few phones to offer 3GB RAM and was 4G enabled when 4G was not fully available in India.
25. OnePlus phones were also one of the first Android devices to sport a USB-C port over the older micro USB port.
26. OnePlus CEO, Pete Lau, made the world’s first 5G tweet! In August of 2018, the OnePlus 5G Project Team successfully established a 5G connection to Qualcomm's laboratory located in San Diego, in the US.
27. In the United States, the OnePlus 7 Pro was the first phone to market with a mechanical selfie camera, as well as the first device with a 90Hz refresh rate on an OLED display.
28. The OnePlus 7 Pro and OnePlus 7 are the first phones to go on sale with UFS 3.0 storage.
29. The OnePlus 7T was the first device with Android 10 pre-installed.
30. Every single device OnePlus releases going forward will feature at least a 90Hz display refresh rate. With OnePlus 8 featuring a 120Hz refresh rate panel.
31. OnePlus launched its OnePlus 2 in the world’s first VR launch event. For that launch, OnePlus gave away over 30,000 specially customized Google Cardboard viewers to let its community of fans tune in and watch the unveiling in a lot more detail than usual.
32. OnePlus launched the OnePlus Nord in the world’s first smartphone AR launch event.
33. OnePlus also set a Guinness World Record title of "the most people unboxing a phone simultaneously" on the launch of OnePlus 6T. The record attempt began on Thursday, November 1 at 8.30 p.m. and the participants were among the first customers in India to get their hands on the OnePlus 6T within two days after the launch announcement in India.
New Ventures
34. A fact I bet you didn’t know was that OnePlus makes drones. Haha, don’t worry they don't. On April 1, 2015, OnePlus announced their OnePlus DR-1 Drone as an April Fool’s prank.
35. In 2019 OnePlus got into the TV business when it announced the 55-inch QLED “nearly bezel-less” OnePlus TV which launching exclusively in India.
36. On stage during its India launch for the OnePlus 7T, the company formally took the wraps off OnePlus Pay which will allow for contactless payments in stores as well as offer other digital wallet features. Unfortunately, OnePlus didn’t reveal much about OnePlus Pay other than its existence. It did say that it will arrive in India at some point in 2020, so we’ll need to wait and see.
37. This year in 2020 OnePlus unveiled their first Concept phone which used MacLaren’s Electrochromic technology to hide its rear camera set up instead showing a black strip at the back.
Retail Records
38. Currently, the smartphone serves 38 countries across Asia-pacific, Europe, North America, Australia and the middle east.
39. OnePlus products flew 2,795,187,047 miles in 2018. That’s 40 trips to Mars and back.
40. It’s no secret that Indians love OnePlus. We love them so much that in 2019, OnePlus led the premium smartphone segment with 33% market share, well ahead of both Samsung at 26% and Apple at 25%
41. This was helped by OnePlus selling a record ₹1,500 crores worth of sales during the ongoing Diwali 2019 sales across platforms.
42. The company became the first-ever premium smartphone brand surpassing 20 lakh shipments in a year in India.
43. Another crazy stat about the OnePlus 6 was that the company sold 1 million devices in India within 22 days!
OnePlus India
44. OnePlus opened up a massive 186,000 square feet R&D centre in Hyderabad. OnePlus also announced that it will invest ₹1,000 Crore over the next 3 years in R&D.
45. The company would also be part of 5G trials in India in partnership with chipset maker Qualcomm at the Hyderabad R&D centre.
Easter Eggs
46. If you open the calculator and write “1+=” and then you’ll see their branding slogan “Never settle”
47. If you enable aeroplane mode on your OnePlus device you will see the Airplane take off
48. With the OnePlus 7 Pro, the company teamed up with huge eSports team Fnatic to create a gaming mode. One thing many people don’t know is that the company hid exclusive wallpapers in your OnePlus7Pro. You can unlock them by opening settings and heading to utilities>Gaming Mode>Fnatic Mode After tapping the logo 5 times a text box will appear and if you type “alwaysfnatic” and press enter the wallpapers will be added to your library.
49. In the little more than 6 years that OnePlus has been around it has scored some huge collaborations with Star Wars, Marvel and MacLaren to launch limited edition smartphones with customized UI and wallpapers like OnePlus 5T Star Wars Edition, OnePlus 6T, 7 T MacLaren edition and OnePlus 6 Avengers edition which was available only in India.
50. The Star Wars Edition device was full of easter eggs. The package itself had hints which asked users to form a prism out of it. If you opened the weather app and tap on Ahch-To a message from the beloved R2D2 invites you to the OnePlus family.
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Mayank Sachdeva
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