We clock what you're trying to do here: El Reg strokes a claw across the OnePlus 9 Pro

OnePlus has been under fire in recent weeks over benchmark tests that appeared to throttle real-world performance of the OnePlus 9 series, dividing fans who think a fullbore Snapdragon 888 might be overegging the pudding for most use cases and others who like to run a hotter handset. Throughout its lifetime, OnePlus has tried …

[Anonymous Coward]

Software updates

The big problem with OnePlus at the moment is they have a software development team that can support the 2 or 3 phones a year they used to release....

But now they are releasing 6 - 8 phones a year, they just can't keep up and software updates (including security updates) are few and far between... They have just discontinued the Beta channel for the 7 series without providing a "nice" way to get back onto the only remaining channel (I don't call "wipe and reinstall" a "nice" upgrade route!)

They will also need to support phones with "major releases" for longer to remain competitive...

The hardware is good but needs to be properly supported after the next "shiny shiny" is released...

Maybe merging their team with Oppo might help but Oxygen is actually a nice, lightweight skin with some useful additions...

(I run a OnePlus 7T)

[Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?]

TL;DR

I skipped to the end, found the price and was greatly thankful I didn't bother reading the rest of the article.

[Lon24]

Re: TL;DR

Yep, 900 smackers is now El Reg's 'mid-range'. Dunno where that puts me who for the last decade has spent between £142 (nice Honor 20 Lite) and £289 (Nexus 4 & 5) for something that has a design life of two years that, with luck, you can stretch to four. Some people apparently pay more for that for a screen repair nowadays.

My personal division is (Apple users look away now):

Budget < £100

Mid-range £100 to £200

Exotic £200-£300

Silly £300+

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: TL;DR

Agreed. I bought a secondhand Google Pixel 3 for £90 4 months ago. It's just fine. I wonder if the One Plus is ten times better, and somehow doubt it.

[JDX]

£900 Good grief

I remember my first 1+ phone set me back £329, and it was awesome. Apple breaks the grand mark with the X and suddenly anything under that is "budget?"

Wow.

[Robert Grant]

Re: £900 Good grief

I'm also mildly frustrated that El Reg would succumb to the silly "aspirational" nomenclature. Aspiring to what? It's "expensive".

[Bryan Hall]

OP6 User Thoughts

I bought my OP6 256GB model mainly due to it having great OS patch and upgrade support OUTSIDE of a vendor, plus a fair price. Upgrading from an AT&T Samsung, it was a great experience and continues to be so. This does everything I need, and I am careful to charge it to less than 90% to keep the battery healthy longer. The drop off of security updates is my only real concern.

That said, I've watched the new releases steadily climb in price though, and I'm not sure what I'll get in the future. That's a pretty steep price to pay when that money could be better used for a higher end development / video edit laptop upgrade.

[W.S.Gosset]

Internal storage too small

> the 12GB/256GB model, which retails at a cool £929. The base 8GB/128GB model

I've found SD card expansion ~useless unless you're a massive photo head. Almost no app can install on it. Other data files are tiny. So you wind up with a large empty useless space.

*Internal* storage is *critical* for Android. You can not install new apps after ~1yr on an 8gb phone because Android suddenly demands ~1.5gb per install, even for 5-10mb widgets. I've had this behaviour on 4 phones now: after about a year, all apps require well over a gig of free space to install. And it all must come out of Internal Storage, forget the SD card.

So at 8gb, this phone has about a 1 year lifespan before it's "locked" with whatever apps you happen to have installed at that point.

[Screepy]

Re: Internal storage too small

Um... the 8GB refers to the RAM not storage.

My OnePlus 6 is brimming with apps/widgets and they all run happily on the 8GB RAM that it has.

As for whether 128GB of internal storage is enough, that depends on the user. If you are a snap happy mad person who never deletes or cleans out old photos/videos then yes you may run out of the 128GB of internal storage.

A lot of people find 128GB easily enough (me for example) - phone is 3 years old and is at 67% capacity.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Internal storage too small

"RAM"? *checks article again* Oh FFS.

Sorry, you're right, I read that as the normal built-in/expansion storage syntax, but yes he was actually talking about RAM.

Guess I kinda tuned out his RAM talk since I've never found it a material constraint on an android phone. Anything over 1mb works fine.

But my (this) 8mb internal storage phone is jammed re new apps, while my 64gb SD card is basically empty despite moving over everything possible. And new apps insist on only using internal. There's not even a PC-accessible mount point for the SD card, so I can't even use it for file xfer. Bit of a head scratcher as to what android were thinking.