OnePlus 3 T-1 - The just said "Never Settle" again. Why?

[speedlever]

OnePlus 3 T-1 ad on Twitter uses the phrase "T-1: More Never Settle".

Why do they keep saying, "Never Settle" when there's a giant list of things you have to "settle" for on every single device, including OnePlus devices, which have more things to settle on that most of the devices we talk about here?

If they got rid of that phrase and started marketing it as, "one of the best values around" I'd probably be one of their biggest supporters. As it is, every single year it comes off as a huge lie where a bunch of people will try to pretend that it's the best phone out there, not just one of the best values out there. So annoying.

After nearly 4 weeks of owning the OP3, I've only found one thing I have to settle for. And that appears to be stock Android related. I really, really miss my keypad based speed dial option. I use the direct dial widgets, but don't find them as handy as the speed dial option. Otherwise, I don't miss having to reboot my Galaxy S4 one or more times a day, or being on a year old security update, or having that small-ish 5.0 inch screen, or....

Battery life has been far better than expected, even though I keep doing my thing of loading apps (that I seldom use) on it. Perhaps having a pure black background makes a difference there. I keep Ampere running in the notification bar so I can get an instant idea of my power usage. My GS4 seemed stuck on 480mA while the OP3 often drops to 30mA or so.

I'm very pleased with the screen brightness and clarity too. This is a big upgrade from the 1080p screen on the GS4, even though it's still 1080p. I had to run the GS4 in max brightness to use it for nav during the day. I use adaptive brightness set around 40-50% on the OP3 and have been surprised at how well I can see the screen during the day. That was a big concern coming from the SAMOLED 1080p screen of the GS4.

Other than a battery with more capacity and the 128GB option, the OP3T barely gets my attention. And I fully support OP's decision to bring out the OP3T, so long as they support/develop the 3 and 3T together. The 3T in no way infringes on my OP3 experience.

I'm very glad I decided to take a chance on OP and their products. I hope I don't have to try out their customer service. I never had to do that with my GS4 or earlier phones, so hopefully won't need any service on this phone either.

 

[Aquila]

Re: OnePlus 3 T-1 - The just said "Never Settle" again. Why?

After nearly 4 weeks of owning the OP3, I've only found one thing I have to settle for. And that appears to be stock Android related. I really, really miss my keypad based speed dial option. I use the direct dial widgets, but don't find them as handy as the speed dial option. Otherwise, I don't miss having to reboot my Galaxy S4 one or more times a day, or being on a year old security update, or having that small-ish 5.0 inch screen, or....

Battery life has been far better than expected, even though I keep doing my thing of loading apps (that I seldom use) on it. Perhaps having a pure black background makes a difference there. I keep Ampere running in the notification bar so I can get an instant idea of my power usage. My GS4 seemed stuck on 480mA while the OP3 often drops to 30mA or so.

I'm very pleased with the screen brightness and clarity too. This is a big upgrade from the 1080p screen on the GS4, even though it's still 1080p. I had to run the GS4 in max brightness to use it for nav during the day. I use adaptive brightness set around 40-50% on the OP3 and have been surprised at how well I can see the screen during the day. That was a big concern coming from the SAMOLED 1080p screen of the GS4.

Other than a battery with more capacity and the 128GB option, the OP3T barely gets my attention. And I fully support OP's decision to bring out the OP3T, so long as they support/develop the 3 and 3T together. The 3T in no way infringes on my OP3 experience.

I'm very glad I decided to take a chance on OP and their products. I hope I don't have to try out their customer service. I never had to do that with my GS4 or earlier phones, so hopefully won't need any service on this phone either.

It's awesome that you love it . It's impossible for me to use the phone because it doesn't work for over half of US mobile customers and I'd have an issue with the proprietary charger, poor display, off screen buttons and lack of official software support - but I also know that most users absolutely don't care about those things. At the end of the day, whatever makes you happy is the right device. Glad you found yours. They make a very good device at a great price, just not meant for me.

 

[speedlever]

No worries. It's a good thing one phone doesn't work for everyone. I like choices.

Regarding the proprietary charger, that's only for Dash charging which I only occasionally use. In my vehicles, I use a conventional 2.4A (12w)/port charger like Anker, etc. and use a Benson Leung approved USB A to C cable and enjoy pretty quick charging while I nav. I typically get all the charge I need from multiple trips during the day.

I used to be with VZW but left some years ago due to the high cost of service and the proprietary tendency of their phones/bloatware. They have great service, but I wanted more flexibility at less cost while still enjoying comparable coverage and customer service. I'm still puzzled about the Pixel/VZW exclusive arrangement.

I'm happy to find a near pure Android experience although I was a bit leery of Oxygen at first. Samsung lost me when they came out with the Galaxy S6 (iPhone style) sealed glass phones. And I've been somewhat unhappy with the uninstallable bloat between them and AT&T too. I'm happy I can BYOD with AT&T and have had no complaints with the OP3 in service.

I did have an odd issue this morning in that Waze kept telling me it was searching for the network (even though it would properly nav) and I couldn't get on the 'net (away from wifi). My cell settings were enabled and cycling airplane mode did not change anything. A quick reboot (about 40 seconds) and everything was back to normal. So I dunno what happened. Could be like a PC I fixed the other day that wouldn't connect even after a reboot. I had to go in and do a release and renew from ipconfig and then all was well. Stray electrons and all that, I suppose.

 

[dannyar11]

Re: OnePlus 3 T-1 - The just said "Never Settle" again. Why?

It's awesome that you love it . It's impossible for me to use the phone because it doesn't work for over half of US mobile customers and I'd have an issue with the proprietary charger, poor display, off screen buttons and lack of official software support - but I also know that most users absolutely don't care about those things. At the end of the day, whatever makes you happy is the right device. Glad you found yours. They make a very good device at a great price, just not meant for me.

1-So you are salty about not being able to use it on your carrier, so you bash the device as being a midranger.
2-If the proprietary charger is the best in the business at charging your phone and managing heat then whats the issue?
3-Poor display? Its been widely lauded as one of the best if not THE best 1080p amoled panels on any device. Ill take 1080p in exchange for the battery trade off.
4-Off screen buttons? Um, the glory of the phone is you are able to modify how you see fit. Enable on screen buttons instead and problems solved.
5- Software support? Last I checkd Oneplus has been great about releasing regular security updates and has promised Nougat before years end.

What's really your issue here? You have been ripping the OP3 since it launched because of its catch phrase? Bottom line is your salty because you cant purchase the device and use it on your carrier correct?

 

[speedlever]

Ditto about the choice of having on or off screen buttons. Coming from my Samsung background, I love the off screen button option and that is what I use. Never even tried the on-screen buttons.

 

[Aquila]

Re: OnePlus 3 T-1 - The just said "Never Settle" again. Why?

1-So you are salty about not being able to use it on your carrier, so you bash the device as being a midranger.
2-If the proprietary charger is the best in the business at charging your phone and managing heat then whats the issue?
3-Poor display? Its been widely lauded as one of the best if not THE best 1080p amoled panels on any device. Ill take 1080p in exchange for the battery trade off.
4-Off screen buttons? Um, the glory of the phone is you are able to modify how you see fit. Enable on screen buttons instead and problems solved.
5- Software support? Last I checkd Oneplus has been great about releasing regular security updates and has promised Nougat before years end.

What's really your issue here? You have been ripping the OP3 since it launched because of its catch phrase? Bottom line is your salty because you cant purchase the device and use it on your carrier correct?

All 5 of your points misrepresented my points. Don't think we're on the same page.

 

[dannyar11]

Re: OnePlus 3 T-1 - The just said "Never Settle" again. Why?

I don't believe so. I basically stated that all 5 of your complaints about the device are personal opinion and almost all of them are facts with the exception of screen quality.

 

[Aquila]

Re: OnePlus 3 T-1 - The just said "Never Settle" again. Why?

I don't believe so. I basically stated that all 5 of your complaints about the device are personal opinion and almost all of them are facts with the exception of screen quality.

So the five things that make me not want it are specific preferences of mine? There are actually 15 line item preferences of mine that it fails at... Guess I should have listed them all? The biggest clue that you didn't understand what I was saying was that you referred to it twice as "salty" and assumed I'd disregard the other issues if it were available on Verizon. I wouldn't. It's a midrange device because it's a midrange device, regardless of their choice to ignore half the population of this market.

And as I've often said, including in the post you quoted, most people don't have the same preferences as I do and I know that and there's no reason that my preference should influence theirs. I sincerely said I was glad that someone else liked it and detailed some of the reasons that it's not for me. That's just us sharing our opinions, but rather than share yours, you engaged in a totally different manner than the discussion we were having, including misrepresentation of both the device features and my statements about them.

The screen is objectively bad; the software and software support and security and upgrade speed and timing are all objectively worse than my other devices; the charger is objectively different than the standards for USB-C data and charging functionality, etc. Then the on screen vs off screen buttons is a choice, etc. It's easy to follow which things are measurable and which things are a personal preference.

If you want to engage with the points I'm actually making rather than your strawman version of them, then I'd ask that you make an effort to accurately represent my intentions within those points throughout your rebuttals. Otherwise you're arguing with yourself and yet quoting me ... and that makes it difficult to figure out what you're arguing for or against.

 

[speedlever]

I'd really like to see a screen comparison where I could subjectively tell the difference between my OP3 screen and something considered good. I just asked my daughter (19) to compare her iPhone 6s screen to mine with both set at medium brightness and neither she nor I could tell any difference between the quality of the displays. I can't tell any difference in my wife's iP7 either.

If I compare the OP3 screen to my GS4 screen, the OP3 is clearly superior to the GS4 and I can easily see the OP3 screen in daylight where I struggle to see the GS4 screen in the same light. So I'm really curious what others see (or don't see) in the OP3 display that turns them off. Or maybe I don't want to know if I would then see it too. Ignorance is often bliss, they say.

 

[Aquila]

Ignorance is almost ALWAYS bliss I'm totally happy with leaving it at "glad you love your phone!"

 

[RoadBicyclist]

All I know is the display is not 4K, so no VR is recommended for this phone. I don't think I'll use VR anytime in the near future, find that more gimmicky than anything else, the younger crowd will probably disagree with me, but:

1. Is the display really that bad besides not being 4K?
2. Are there any other issues the 3T display does not fulfill?

 

[Aquila]

All I know is the display is not 4K, so no VR is recommended for this phone. I don't think I'll use VR anytime in the near future, find that more gimmicky than anything else, the younger crowd will probably disagree with me, but:

1. Is the display really that bad besides not being 4K?
2. Are there any other issues the 3T display does not fulfill?

I have no idea about the quality of the 3T - although Anand mentions in passing that it is the same display as the 3, so if that's the case, it's still bad.

There were two aspects of the 3 display that sucked at launch: 1. The colors were way off 2. they used a very old form of Pentile pixel configuration on a 5.5" 1080p AMOLED display, which results in the screendoor effect and has some fairly noticable problems when trying to do things like rendering text. This issue is heavily mitigated by using a higher resolution, such as 1440p - although this configuration would be more acceptable on a smaller display, such as the sub 5" category for the same reason as 1440p on a 5.5" is the defacto minimum for that type of configuration.

So, they fixed the color issue with a software update that pushed it well past the minimum expectations for 2016 phones and into the good category - it actually fell in just behind the Nexus 6P, which was one of the best non-Samsung devices using a Samsung AMOLED display at the time.

TL-DR - because OP doesn't properly understand display technology, they had two major blunders on the display front that would make it noticeably inferior to even the OnePlus One, but especially devices with great displays, such as the last few years of iPhones, Samsungs, the 2015 Nexus phones, etc. They fixed one of the blunders, but the other is hardware and not fixable. This is one of my many issues with the concept of "Never Settle". Never settling implies that every component, the software and the package as a whole are the best that are available to for consumer products.

Not being the best at everything certainly doesn't make you bad, but it does make you not the best. And as in all the other threads, the fact that there are compromises isn't bad - all phones compromise on various factors - it's the lying about compromising that creates the issues.

 

[RoadBicyclist]

What display brand do they use if it's not Samsung? Are there any other phones using this same display?

 

[speedlever]

I have no idea about the quality of the 3T - although Anand mentions in passing that it is the same display as the 3, so if that's the case, it's still bad.

There were two aspects of the 3 display that sucked at launch: 1. The colors were way off 2. they used a very old form of Pentile pixel configuration on a 5.5" 1080p AMOLED display, which results in the screendoor effect and has some fairly noticable problems when trying to do things like rendering text. This issue is heavily mitigated by using a higher resolution, such as 1440p - although this configuration would be more acceptable on a smaller display, such as the sub 5" category for the same reason as 1440p on a 5.5" is the defacto minimum for that type of configuration.

So, they fixed the color issue with a software update that pushed it well past the minimum expectations for 2016 phones and into the good category

Here's the thing for me. I can't see the screen door effect. I am very near-sighted and without corrective lenses, I can focus very closely on near objects. I can't see anything like that screen door effect (which I've noticed on some TVs). If you mean the individual pixels are visible, then yes, I can barely see them on very close observation without out my glasses and focusing at about 3 inches from my eye. But put my glasses back on and view from normal distances and wow, it looks really good to me.

And regarding the colors, maybe it's just me, but I've noticed very little difference between standard and sRGB mode on my OP3. Shrug.

I guess this is what makes us all individuals.

 

[Aquila]

I guess this is what makes us all individuals.

Yeah I'm well aware that people like me are in the severe minority of weirdness, even among phone nerds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVuqfXohxc

 

[speedlever]

Ha ha. Great video!

 

[dannyar11]

I believe I clearly pointed out every single thing about your argument that was flawed. Your choice to dance around the topic in a way to avoid an actual direct response falls on you. I will reiterate again, your opinion that the OP3 screen sucked is just that, an opinion without actual research results from trusted sources or individuals who did a thorough analysis on the screen quality itself. "its a midrange device because its a midrange device". According to who? you? give me a break. What makes it mid range and what makes it different from an iphone or galaxy device? What do you consider for example industry labeled midrange devices such as the HTC A9 and Moto G4? By all accounts these are "midrange" but I guess by your rating system they would be low end since theres no way you could classify them in the same breath as the OP3T. Also thanks for the definition of "Never Settle", which by all accounts is so flawed in everyway that it would require 3 paragraphs to explain. In short, I guess parents should stop telling their kids to "Never Settle". By your description anything short of the best would be settling. So Doctors, Lawyers, etc would be the only thing acceptable. You don't like the phone, we get it, but stop preaching to us the definition of Never Settle and putting down a phone that just about everyone in the industry is calling the best value available and a threat to all the high end devices such as the Pixel and Galaxy line.

 

[RoadBicyclist]

After doing a little more reading, the display resolution on the Google Pixel (not the Pixel XL) is the same as the 3T. The only real difference between both phones seems to be, from what I can find, the camera which is obviously quite different on both phones, about 50% more or less through software improvements I would say; and the $200 price difference.

Does that mean the Pixel is in reality a mid-range phone just like the 3T? Or am I missing anything else?

 

[Aquila]

After doing a little more reading, the display resolution on the Google Pixel (not the Pixel XL) is the same as the 3T. The only real difference between both phones seems to be, from what I can find, the camera which is obviously quite different on both phones, about 50% more or less through software improvements I would say; and the $200 price difference.

Does that mean the Pixel is in reality a mid-range phone just like the 3T? Or am I missing anything else?

Yes there are many differences. And resolution alone isn't an issue; it's a matter of how it's implemented relative to display size.

 

[Aquila]

I believe I clearly pointed out every single thing about your argument that was flawed. Your choice to dance around the topic in a way to avoid an actual direct response falls on you. I will reiterate again, your opinion that the OP3 screen sucked is just that, an opinion without actual research results from trusted sources or individuals who did a thorough analysis on the screen quality itself. "its a midrange device because its a midrange device". According to who? you? give me a break. What makes it mid range and what makes it different from an iphone or galaxy device? What do you consider for example industry labeled midrange devices such as the HTC A9 and Moto G4? By all accounts these are "midrange" but I guess by your rating system they would be low end since theres no way you could classify them in the same breath as the OP3T. Also thanks for the definition of "Never Settle", which by all accounts is so flawed in everyway that it would require 3 paragraphs to explain. In short, I guess parents should stop telling their kids to "Never Settle". By your description anything short of the best would be settling. So Doctors, Lawyers, etc would be the only thing acceptable. You don't like the phone, we get it, but stop preaching to us the definition of Never Settle and putting down a phone that just about everyone in the industry is calling the best value available and a threat to all the high end devices such as the Pixel and Galaxy line.

I haven't put the phone down. I've put down the components that were objectively measured to be subpar... That's not the same thing. I've said what I like and dislike about it and said it's not the best available, which is true. It is a hell of a value, I've never said otherwise. Again, you're responding with vitriol to arguments that you're inventing and implying I am making those arguments. I'm not; you're arguing disingenuously with a straw man of your creation and misrepresenting my statements. That's not a good way to discuss anything so let's stop wasting each other's time.