Android mobe biz OnePlus goes to the dogs - or maybe cats

The cat-video school of marketing has been used to promote OnePlus dropping its need for an invitation to buy one of its smartphones. The cat is called Una - except it isn’t a cat, it’s a dog. Perhaps it’s been watching too many O2 adverts*. When OnePlus launched the OnePlus One it put into place a system of invitations. If …

[Richard Taylor 2]

Looks good. Shame about the weakness in 4g coverage for a number of UK networks.

[Irongut]

As much as I love annoying vagueness, care to elaborate which networks?

[Andrew Peake]

Works fine on EE

[Anonymous Coward]

Works on Three and EE. Although I think only one of the 4G bands they use so not really a full service. This is the also the case with all the no name Chinese import phones.

[Arnold Lieberman]

@ therebel

Not all, some. Zopo ZP999 covers all EU bands and others:

1, 3*, 7*, 17, 20*, 38, 39, 40, 41.

* = EU.

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: 4G coverage

actually all networks, all phones...

Try looking at a 4G coverage map of the UK for any network - vast swathes without any 4G - places which are the best part of 100 miles from the nearest 4G reception. It would be oh so nice if the networks got their act together and tried extending coverage beyond the huddled masses of the cities. It's really not fair - how are the urban yuppies going to cope when they leave their safe, warm, cosy urban pad and head off to their country cottage for the weekend?

[GrumpyOldBloke]

The invitation strategy worked so well for their 1+1 product, sold a handful of phones with a commodity operating system, I can't see why it wouldn't work just as well for the 1+2. This time 2017 they might be up to 1400 people supporting 2 million phones. A problem for manufacturers selling high end products, even the ones that don't play silly games, is that the development of the android operating system has all but stagnated. Google is struggling to get a simple lollipop makeover out the door and working properly let alone Ubuntu-edge type use cases that would justify higher end hardware. Might be time for a new mobile OS.

[Jimbo in Thailand]

OnePLus what Wicked Games you play!

The novel 'invitation' game may have indeed worked to generate some sales early on since no one really knew anything about the then-new One Plus company or their new phone, but after a while the game became tiresome and I believe they lost many sales as a result of dragging it out far too long. The only real winners seemed to be the many ebayers selling their invitations and 1+1 phones for very inflated prices.

Gotta admit I was still considering purchasing a 1+1 phone last summer when my SG Note 2 finally died a slow death. Later I read that Cyanogen dumped OnePlus so I'm guessing there's zero support for the early adopters unless he/she switches to OnePlus's Chinese version of Android, which is too scary to think about.

As for me, I'll skip their Wicked Games (my apologies to Chris Isaac) as there are many great phones out there these days and no need to deal with OnePLus and their shite marketing philosophy.