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Yeah, I think you're right, I still see Nexus 5s around every day and why did it do so well? Because it was priced at $200 less than otherwise comparable flagship devices from Apple, Samsung and HTC.

Heck, look at the OnePlus 3 right now, it has more battery than a Pixel, an 820 instead of an 821, but also 2 GB more RAM than the Pixel. Pretty close specs overall, but one device costs $250 USD less. Unless the only thing you care about is camera quality, you really have to consider if that Pixel will be $250 more worth of phone than the OP3. Is that 820->821 upgrade going to make a difference in your daily usage?

I think the answer is probably not, and I think that holds true for other flagship devices. Never will I pay $650 when I can get a roughly comparable phone for $400 or less.




You're forgetting some people (like me) don't put price as the top factor. The OP3 is too big, I hate large phones. I also have this borderline allergic reaction to third-party skins after dealing with years and years of Samsung. Then there's the final nail in the coffin - bugs. I used to root and then roll cyanogenmod and there were always these small little bugs that never quite got worked out. I had the same issue with my original OP1, and it appears the same sort of thing exists with the OP3.

If oneplus worked with Google to put vanilla android | a fully supported bug free version | onto the OP3 I'd consider it, but the form factor would still likely be a deal breaker.


Really? I'm running a OP1 right now, never noticed a problem... is there something I'm missing? Biggest issue I've had is probably shooting RAW pictures on non-stock ROMs was kind of complicated until someone made a flashable version of the OPPO camera app.


Well, for starters like 50%+ of the first round of phones to go out had touch screen issues that as far as I know never got fixed. After sending mine back 3 times, I gave up.


You installed cyanogenmod on your OP1?


Yes? Using non-mod cyanogen OS gave me bootloader issues because I didn't update the official way.

I've run CM for a few years on it actually, decided to try Paranoid Android again recently when it looked like they started back up (I missed HOLO) but that now seems abandoned again and I really missed some features that turned out to be from CM, so I'm probably going back soon.


And yet, the OnePlus 3 sells a fraction of the amount that the Samsung Galaxy S7 sells.

It really seems like inexpensive high-end phones should sell like hotcakes, but in practice, it doesn't happen. It's arguably very possible that a $650 phone will sell better than a $450 phone even with the same components, because it'll get perceived as "high-end" in a way the inexpensive one wouldn't.


Probably because not many providers sell the phone, they'd rather rip you off with whatever overpriced contract they can. A few years ago many providers did have the N5 and it did do very well (anecdotally). I think if they could lock those deals down they'd do better, but I'm sure there's some conflicts of interest at play there.


I think they have to price them this high because neither Verizon nor HTC have their logos on the phone. I think that may have cost Google, but of course, I'm just guessing/trying to rationalize why they feel they need to charge so much.


This is even more pronounced in Europe, in Germany OnePlus 3 costs 360€ (~$400) less than the baseline Pixel. Basically you'll get two OnePlus devices (399€) for the price of one Pixel (759€).




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