Three years and seven phones later, it’s hard to argue with OnePlus’s methods. That’s not to say it hasn’t made its share of missteps along the way (it definitely has), but the company has produced quality phones at affordable prices basically since day one.
User feedback has always been an important piece of OnePlus’s business model. The company fostered initial interest through an activity message board and an invite-only system, and much of that connection appears to still be intact, seven phones in. The company didn’t rush to include any features on the 5T — many like Portrait Mode and the 18:9 aspect ratio have already been a staple in flagship smartphones for six months or a year.
The company makes no bones about waiting to add features, nor does its rush to drop them for the sake of future-proofing. Case in point, the headphone jack. After a Twitter poll from co-founder Carl Pei found that fans overwhelmingly wanted the headphone jack to stick around, the company’s phones have continued to support the port.
The result, in the case of the OnePlus 5T, is a phone that ticks just about all of the necessary boxes for most Android users. While it’s true that the handset won’t elicit the same sort of high-end phone envy as the latest handsets from companies like Samsung, the 5T is a utilitarian device in the best possible way. It doesn’t push any limits or break any ground, but it offers premium or near-premium specs in a nice package for an accessible starting price of $499 — roughly half of what that shiny new iPhone will cost you.
The low-light performance has been noticeably improved, and that impacts more users on a day to day basis, cutting out a lot of the noise you get when not shooting a photo in perfect daylight conditions.
And given all of the stumbles companies like Google and Samsung have had attempting to stay on the bleeding edge, there's also something to be said for not being too eager to be the first one to embrace a technology - or drop a headphone jack.
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