Member-only story
OnePlus is No Longer an Enthusiast Brand…And That’s Okay
The OnePlus One is a phone that I think about a lot. I remember back in the summer of 2014 when I purchased one from someone on Craigslist since I wasn’t one of the lucky people to get an invite to purchase the phone (what a weird system that was). I remember thinking how amazing it was to get that much phone for so little, surely this phone would change the way that phones would be priced forever. I was wrong. Phone prices have gone up since then and OnePlus has increased their prices every year to boot. It would seem that the company is going back to its roots with the launch of the OnePlus Nord, a phone that is more aggressive on price with almost flagship specifications.
While some are seeing this as a return to the days of the OnePlus One, the reality is that this is a further indication of the new OnePlus, a company that is more like the household names of the Android world than the upstart from 6 years ago. The OnePlus Nord shows something that OnePlus has never quite had before: smartphone category range. Previously, there was always just the OnePlus flagship of that year followed by the “T” upgrade; now they have the “mid-range” portion of the smartphone equation in their portfolio with Nord. This segmentation of the lineup shows us that OnePlus has evolved as a company and is no longer just an enthusiast brand, and that is okay.
