OnePlus Product Manager Says the Flat Images of the OnePlus 5 Don’t Do it Justice
In typical OnePlus fashion, the company has been able to garner a lot of attention about its upcoming smartphone release. This started with sprinkles of information about the device including a camera sample, it’s official reveal date, and then some details about hardware specs leaked out thanks to an Amazon.in product page. However, then the floodgates opened up when what was said to be the official press render of the phone was leaked.
This happened on a couple of websites at the same time, but was the corroborated by Android Police when one of their sources said it was legitimate. Since the cat was already out of the bag, the official OnePlus social media accounts started showing off the device. This confirmed what we had just seen leaked, and it started a huge debate within the community about whether or not this design was good for the company. Many were making comparisons of it to the iPhone 7 Plus.
Some have have even compared it to Oppo’s own R11 smartphone and this actually makes a lot of sense because they are a parent company of OnePlus. Either way, it’s clear that OnePlus drew their inspiration of the OnePlus 5 from other device and it’s caused a lot of people to criticize their decision. So much so, that a OnePlus Product Manager even spoke out on Zhihu (which is similar to Quora) to defend the choices OnePlus had made.
They compared this scenario to the OnePlus 3 release and said that people were complaining about the design they went with for that as well. Saying that it wasn’t until people got the phone in their hands that they actually started to enjoy how the device looked and felt. He brought up the OnePlus 2, which was criticized in leaks but more-or-less admired for being different once it released. Personally, I’m not seeing people complaining that the design of the upcoming OnePlus 5 looks bad per se. Instead, I’m seeing people criticize how unoriginal the phone looks because of its many similarities to other phones.
It’s clear that this decision is a controversial one and it’s one that could actually benefit OnePlus in the long run because I don’t see this debate cooling down anytime soon. And the more people talk about it without OnePlus having to pay for advertisements, the better it could be for them.
