You may or may not have heard of the new craze sweeping Google + and pretty much all of the tech community right now. This craze is a new phone from a brand new company called One Plus One. This phone is designed to be the phone to end all phones, and I will say that spec wise it does just that, it runs the gamut of high end tech. The one + one is running the Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.3 ghz, a 1080p 5.5” display, and 3gbs of RAM. This phone on all accounts is a beast, on the software side it is running Cyanogen Mod 11s. This is a custom ROM built specifically for this device. In layman’s terms, it is running a beefed up version of Android 4.4 KitKat. And one might ask well how much will the super phone cost??? Well this is the best part, you can have all this for only $300 OFF contract, for the 16gb or $350 for the 64gb. WHAT!?!?! That is insane, the HTC One m8 is $699 and the Samsung GS5 is $750.
And that my friends is where the good ends for this company, they have had a track record of talking some serious trash about the other OEMs. They have directly called Samsung out with a comparison chart of the GS5 and the 1+1. Stating that the GS5 is not worth the cost of the phone, and that the 1+1 is a better product. This in it of itself is fine, companies trash the competition all the time. The difference is when they do, they have an actual product to back up the smack. The 1+1 was not even released yet, when they pulled this stunt. That would be like me saying the Iphone 6 is better than the HTC One m8, even though Apple has yet to release the product yet, or even announce it for that matter. In my mind there can be no direct comparison without an actual product to compare it to.
That however was not even their greatest offense to date. The Company posted a picture of a Sony Xperia Z1 and stated that their phone would have a smaller chassis than the Z1 while having a much larger screen. After the product was released and the dimensions of the phone were announced, This was obviously a complete and utter lie, as the 1+1 is quite a bit bigger than the Z1. In fact Phandroid put up a comparison chart proving that the 1+1 is not a normal sized phone, but more in fact along the size of a phablet. They would have been fine with the size if they stated that it would be a phablet all along. I think that for a 5.5” display it is a great size, but had they compared this to the Note 3 or the HTC One Max Or the LG G2 Pro, they would have more credibility in their statement and would not have come off as a lie.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me though was their Smash the Past campaign. They are running a promotion that 100 lucky winners will get the chance to destroy their old phones to receive this super phone for only $1. While I love the idea of giving away 100 of their phones to build a good user base, I do not however agree with the premise of destroying perfectly good technology. I would like to have seen them do a trade in system or a lottery draw that which is a better promotion than killing off 100 working phones. I have even heard that donating the phones to a charity would be a good idea. I hate seeing technology that works just fine destroyed for the sake of a sale or a video on youtube (here’s looking at you drop testers). It makes no sense to me, but maybe that’s because I don’t have disposable income and can’t go out and buy every new flagship phone as it comes out.
At the end of the day this is a nerd’s phone. I would even venture to say that only nerds know about this phone, and that the average consumer has no clue that this phone even exists. One +'s entire customer base is full of people who love technology and follow the industry religiously, so as a good business model it would be a good idea not to piss off their base of consumers. They have done just that with their arrogance, lies and bad PR campaign. I have seen on G+ the android community ride a rollercoaster with this phone. First it was awe and wonder that such a God phone could even exist, then it was shock that they were targeting tech giants like Samsung or LG, then it was disappointment when the actual size of the device was released. Now the community is in an uproar about how this company is willing to lie and destroy great tech just to sell a phone.
I wanted to get behind this phone, but I learned my lesson with the Moto X, NEVER believe the hype, it will never live up to what you want it to be. I am Disappoint with this phone and will gladly stick to my HTC One m8. What do yall think, was the One + One everything you hoped for, or did they leave a bad taste in your mouth?
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