serious q: OnePlus looks *great* but I'm concerned about the Chinese government and the de facto cyberwar with the US.

Example: I have security sensitive US clients, and I'd be concerned that (in the future, let alone present) I'd be labeled a security risk for carrying a "chinese cellphone."

How do you mitigate this concern? (serious replies only please)

Most people don't recognise what cell phone someone has, and I've never had a conversation organically turn to phone models unless someone is buying a new one.

I think if you put a case on it, the make/model of your phone will be brought up exactly 0 times in life.

Small aside: I used a Oneplus X for more than 5 years, but these days I'm not sure what positives OP have over other manufacturers. Early phones were great value but the recent releases just seem like other flagships. And the Nord for my usage is just a Pixel 4a but worse.

If this is a real concern then why not pay attention to it? I believe Apple has the best track record in security and not embedding Chinese gov spyware.

This is the exact same reason I can't go for a OnePlus myself. I would look elsewhere.

edit: even if you flash the phone with open-source ROMs and firmware, the closed-nature of cellphones in general make it nigh impossible to know what hardware backdoors the manufacturers are forced to put in.

I don't care for a flagship phone. I ended up with a Nokia.

While I assume they have it manufactured in China like Apple and the rest of the world it seems, I hope their quality assurance is Europe based.

Honestly though, I will watch the answers here.

OnePlus seems to have same kind of marketing aura as Samsung. I remember when they first came out and my co-workers were bragging about the great features OnePlus had. It turned out that Nexus 5 had all the same stuff.

OnePlus was great when they hit the market because their phones had all the same stuff... but for cheaper to significantly cheaper.

They were never really sold as competing with a Nexus 5, and most people weren't buying a Nexus 5. (Even so, it was still ~20% cheaper.) People were looking at a OPO against a Galaxy S4/S5 and the other flagships that were all more than twice the price.

It was "marketing aura" in the sense that they took a phone that would have normally only appealed to developers/phone geeks and managed to market it to the masses to some extent.

But it wasn't _just_ marketing aura just because there was one other phone on the market that could compete with it. It was a legitimately good offering at the time when a Samsung cost twice as much and their offerings in that price range had seen so little care and attention as to be barely functional in many ways.

Oneplus just isn't the same anymore in my opinion. My two year old OnePlus 6 launched at $530 with flagship specs and a headphone jack. The 9 starts at $730 for the same screen resolution, same storage, and it even loses the headphone jack and OIS.

I'm still using my OnePlus One. Damn thing won't die.

Unfortunately OnePlus hasn't been releasing software updates for their new phones

My understanding is that OxygenOS 11 took longer than expected but has been announced as far back as the 7. It was available for the 8/8T a month ago.

Still I am holding off on it as there are too many issues on various forums. I don't think there's anything I'm missing from Android 11 (yet.)

They've actually promised OxygenOS 11 all the way back to the 6. That said, rumors are that we won't get even a BETA until August meaning it will be more than a year after AOSP release and be out of date before it even ships :(

that's wrong. They've just made their latest release - 10.3.9 - and it's supported on all models back to the 6.

Hello fellow 6T owner. I got it just about three years back, the battery is in perfect shape and the phone doesn't have a scratch on it. If I take off the protection, it can genuinely pass off as new.

I'm never getting a phone without an armor again. That thing has fallen so many times on hard concrete and is completely untouched.

I loved my OnePlus One. But then when I went to replace it years later they'd scraped the headphone jack.