OnePlus, how have prices changed over the history of the company?

OnePlus

You can love it or hate it. You may have felt betrayed by her over the years or you can continue to believe in the project. What is certain is that the phenomenon linked to the OnePlus company in all these years has certainly not gone unnoticed in the tech world.

In our now usual appointment of analysis on the evolution of prices of the most iconic smartphones on the market ( you can retrieve the last appointment in chronological order dedicated to Samsung's Galaxy S line), today it's up to the OnePlus devices to pass under our magnifying glass. Let's retrace the history of the brand together, discovering the price trends of the smartphones announced to the cry of "Never Settle".

An "invitation" story

Today we usually see and know OnePlus as an established and consolidated company within the smartphone tech landscape. By pulling back the hands of the clock, however, and placing them back in 2014, the scenario was not exactly similar to the current one ... on the contrary!

No one knows exactly what or who the representatives of the OnePlus world are. The only known elements, however, able to catalyze all the limelight on the newborn company, were essentially two. On the one hand, the similarity, an element that has become known over the years, with the products made by Oppo. On the other hand, the official support for CyanogenMod as an operating system.

Especially this second element, in a 2014 tech world where the user-interfaces were not able to guarantee who knows what brilliance, was able to unleash a lot of hype . Hype that perhaps found the company unprepared, ready to launch its first OnePlus One smartphone for only 269 - 299 euros, so much so as to force the top management to study a sort of sales through invitation systems.

The way may not have been the best, but since Xiaomi entered the scene years earlier, it was the largest marketing operation in the tech field. All at almost zero cost thanks to word of mouth from forums and fan sites. The die was then thrown and no one could from then on not deal with the OnePlus brand ...

The unexpected is just around the corner

I don't know if it is an element and a a “mandatory” step for companies, that of starting with a “bang” and then running into a setback almost immediately. The fact is that even for OnePlus the second generation of smartphones (presented a year later in 2015) represented a small stop in what were the expansion plans. A stop mainly caused by Qualcomm and the unsatisfactory Snapdragon 810.

If on the one hand, then the second smartphone represented in all respects a hardware improvement compared to its predecessor (with also a price increasing up to 339 - 399 euros according to the variants), the overheating problems linked to the processor undermined the growth path of the newborn reality.

The company also tried to introduce shortly after a less powerful smartphone variant, OnePlus X , with less pushed hardware features and able (or so the company hoped) to attract the attention of a larger slice of the public. The price of this variant was 299 euros in a single memory cut.

The semi-annual update starts

Perhaps in part with the fear of being able to run into another problem like the one just experienced with OnePlus 2, the company decided in 2016 for a change of policy that we find still active now after more than five years. A decisive choice both for fans and for those who have not yet learned to consider the brand as on par with its rivals.

I'm obviously referring to the birth of the T variant, which we could define as a refresh and refinement in the original version presented at the beginning of the year by the company, which debuts in 2016 with the third generation of the brand's devices. It is also interesting to note the evolution of prices here, with a OnePlus 3 already in itself more expensive by 60 euros than its predecessor (official price list 399 euros), then further increased with the end-of-year T variant of another 40 euros in the variant base. It is the confirmation of a policy of increases that will not stop in the years to come.

OnePlus 5 and 5T, the best but perhaps a little hidden

The policy of updating every semester provoked a great earthquake in the company's fan base, as well as in "casual" users who wanted to evaluate the purchase of a OnePlus product, which has now become a well-known name in the mobile tech scene.

Everyone was asking what was the point of buying a product knowing that only after a few months it would be overtaken by its improved and corrected version. This caused a strange effect in my opinion, with the 5 and 5T series which perhaps represented the most successful devices up to that moment by the company, but in my opinion not rewarded so much by sales.

Putting analysis aside philosophical though, how did the company deal with the price issue? The increase was always constant, with for the first time a OnePlus smartphone that broke through the wall of 500 euros (OnePlus 5 in the 128GB variant), and then definitively never returned to the 400 euro range with OnePlus 5T (in the basic variant proposed even at € 499).

The beginning of modern history

The OnePlus 6 series together with the OnePlus 7 series represents perhaps the highest peak of popularity among users, now resigned to seeing their wallet deflate even if they buy a product of the brand as well as the competition. The result of inspired designs and ever-increasing performance, many allowed themselves to be persuaded to enter the world of OnePlus, with the 7T model that still today many consider as the most successful of the company.

All with a detail not insignificant and that it is important to present in this price analysis article, or rather the exponential growth of the role of importers. With increasingly higher official prices, the theme of buying from China for OnePlus smartphones became predominant, with the company soon choosing to consider the guarantee valid also for these "import" products, creating a real earthquake in the "official" European market.

The prices for the basic variants of the four smartphones presented in 2018 - 2019 were:

OnePlus 6 - 519 euro OnePlus 6T - 559 euro OnePlus 7 - 559 euro OnePlus 7T - 599 euro But reality gave us not only the two “traditional” smartphones every six months. In fact, for the first time the company launched into the "Pro" sector, certainly driven by the competition, for perhaps what we can define as the second great slip in its history since the time of its second device placed on the market.

To try to patch up the photographic criticalities compared to rivals, OnePlus 7 Pro tried to present itself as a clear separation from its "standard" brother, with a price tag of over 700 euros.

Today

Realized that perhaps presenting 6 versions of smartphones every 12 months risked becoming unsustainable, OnePlus then recalibrated the course with generation 8 and the current 9, presenting "simply" two versions (normal and Pro), for every family.

With prices that have now crossed the 1000 euro wall, it is difficult to look at this historical summary except with a little regret for what could have been and was not . A company that has become in part a victim of its own marketing "Never Settle", perhaps forgetting that its breaking point was not so much in presenting the best possible smartphone at any cost, but rather that of presenting the best possible product at a low price.

At this juncture it is to be seen as partially positive the OnePlus Nord experiment (only the original without entering a forest of mediocre products resulting from the smartphone rebrand of the BBK group), hoping that in the future the company remembers who it was and who it could be.

Want to buy the latest OnePlus smartphone at the best available price? Here is the Amazon offer that's right for you, valid right now!