I’m pretty satisfied with my current smartphone. But “current” is too much of a stretch, so now I’m looking for a replacement.

I have a Oneplus X (Oneplus is the manufacturer, X is the model) phone, you might or might not have heard of it. For reasons unknown to me, Oneplus decided to simply not mention that model ever again. It isn’t there in public marketing material, and it isn’t listed as a refurbish option. Only a bare minimum “support” page remains.

Stars aligned

This specific phone was actually my first smartphone. An opportunity arose at launch, checks wikipedia, around November 2015! Woah, that’s already 6 years ago at the time of writing. This is the full package, a perfect smartphone;

• About 5 inch screen, full phone height at 14cm. This is a NORMAL SIZED phone, ideal for single handed control and fits in any jeans pocket
• Snapdragon 801. A medium-high chipset at the time, “last-gen flagship” POG!
• 3GB RAM
• 16GB internal storage, expandable using second SIM slot
• Gyroscope-, acceleration-, GPS/GLONASS/BDS sensors. Some phones lacked (some of) those sensors, can you imagine?
• FM/AM Radio. Nice to have
• (EU version) Almost all bands for EDGE, 2G, 3G, 4G standards sets. SO I COULD TAKE IT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
• Dual SIM slot. Super useful to combine work and personal SIM
• Bluetooth 4. But who knows if it actually supports Bluetooth Low Energy? I hoped it did.
• 1080p OLED screen with Corning glass front. WOAH BABY!
• Glass back. Nice to have, looks sleek, but invisible when encased.
• Textured aluminum bezel. Yes baby, that’s fricking sexy
• ACTUAL BUTTONS; On/Off, Volume up/down
• Capacitive, programmable buttons; back, home, task switcher
• ALERT SLIDER.
• Single speaker, 3mm audiojack
• Micro-USB
• Single camera at the back with white flash, 13MP
• Single camera in the front, 8MP
• 2500 mAh battery. Not the greatest, could be worse (IPhones had <2000mAh)
• All the common Audio Codecs!
• All the common Video Codecs (including hardware decoding)!

For the people who aren’t technically inclined; this is pretty much feature complete, at least for 2015. This means that you cannot really take anything away without impacting user experience.
This smartphone cost me, checks expenses of 2015, 294 euro’s including delivery. That’s not a lot of bread/potatos/chungus/money considering the list above!
But even still, I agonized over this purchase decision a lot. Around that time I was about to turn 21 years old and never needed a smartphone before. I had to create a need for myself, but at the same time this was an offer too good to ignore.

WHY?

To understand why this was such a great deal I’ll have to make comparisons between the Oneplus X, or OPX, and flagship phones of that time. Beware, this post will end with a rant! It basically wouldn’t become a post if there wasn’t a rant, that’s how my motivation works.

Let’s zoom back to the holiday season of 2015, era of IPhone 6S ($649), Galaxy Note 5($696), Galaxy S6($699), Nexus 6P($499).
NFC is a thing, Wifi AC is a thing, USB-C ports are installed, and fingerprint sensors are there too! The 3mm audio jack still exists and camera modules are limited to 1 per phone, but flashes are now dual-toned. Some flagship models release with an extra-large variant, increasing the height metric with up to 2cm. The IPhones are still relatively small in size though!

Less visible differences are lack of dual-SIM modules, almost no OLED screens but LCD, removal of physical buttons, removal of removable storage modules, no radio transceiver, no system sound equalizer. Optical image stabilization was in a weird spot where some flagships removed it for reasons no one can explain. Some manufacturers experimented with stereo speakers, additional sensors like barometers and magnetometers, or screen curvature.

As for the prominent technical differences in comparison to the OPX; newer but basically the same tech … and NFC. I didn’t care about NFC. I also didn’t care much about the camera sensor because I knew my phone’s primary usage wouldn’t be taking pictures. What I cared about was buying a phone with ‘balanced’ features at a good price.

In hindshight I would have loved NFC. It wasn’t a compromise at the moment I bought the phone.

Balanced features is something I, as a technical person, see lacking everywhere. This happens predominantly with all prebuilt consumer electronics including phones, and desktop hardware, and laptops etc.
Balanced is basically my word for “makes sense”, like following;

• It makes sense to have a dual-sim slot
• It makes sense to have a second monochrome camera sensor
• It makes sense to HAVE OPTICAL IMAGE STABILIZATION
• It makes sense to HAVE A PHYSICAL ALERT SLIDER
• It makes sense to have a biometric sensor, like a fingerprint reader
• It makes sense to have a strong glass protecting the screen
• It makes sense to have an IP65 (dust and water proof) rating
• It makes sense to have expandable storage
• It doesn’t make sense to cut battery capacity given the same formfactor
• It doesn’t make sense to remove physical buttons (capacitive buttons are also physical, but less touchy-touchy)

These items each have functional reasons for being on this list. A second monochrome camera sensor results in better picture colors because more light is captured. Optical image stabilization results in sharper pictures. A physical alert slider is a quick and intuitive way to turn on/off ring volume. Biometric sensors help protecting your privacy. Strong glass against scratches. IP rating to take your phone everywhere a sensible person would, like beach, mountain, jeans pockets, dusty homes, bathrooms.
These features make sense, they hugely improve the experience without any or considerable downsides.

And then there is also balance between internal components, like so;

• It doesn’t make sense to have more than two CPU cores
• It doesn’t make sense to have more than a few gigabytes of RAM
• It doesn’t make sense to have more than (puts finger down randomly) 64 gigabytes of storage
• It doesn’t make sense to have a phone larger than 15cm high
• It doesn’t make sense to have a phone larger than 7cm wide
• It doesn’t make sense to have a higher pixel per square inch ratio than 450-500
• It doesn’t make sense to have multiple camera sensors

It’s a phone, people, that means a small formfactor low energy device that allows you to stay in contact with others accross vast distances. It’s not meant to replace your productivity station (desktop computer), or game console, or a book. The experiences it offers need to be quick to start, intuitively to operate and make relevant data easily accessible.
Most importantly, any other intention is a shortcoming of the device that YOU KNOW ABOUT before you buy it. Then marketing swoops in and tells you what you need, while conveniently leaving out any clues of unpractical use. The end result is you purchasing a smart device with features you don’t need or cannot use, for a price that’s at least double the worth of a gadget. But it’s okay, because all the cool kids payed this much too, at least you think, for what becomes an hardware brick (IT jargon) two to three years into the future.

A (hardware) brick is at worst a device that’s completely broken. At that point it serves no other purpose than a paper weight, or a brick so to speak.
There are people buying a new phone every few years, and store their old phone in some drawer never to be used again. In spirit this is the same as ‘bricking’ your device. This does happen less through environmental efforts by manufacturers, which I applaud.

Sorry, this is where the rant starts. Manufacturers cram unbalanced components into their smartphones to differentiate their product. But that also increases price, and we consumer sheep accept that and pay. Phones just so happen to be in a price category everybody can afford, even if prices nowadays start around nine hundred to a thousand dollars.
No, it doesn’t make sense! This situation is comparable to driving to work with a Porche, the measly distance of 50 meters, up to 50 kilometers, is full of zones with maximum speed limits of 30km/h to 70km/h; Your Porche is OVERKILL, you have PAYED for all this power and speed BUT CANNOT USE IT during 90% of your in-car time. Granted, there are a lot of people make full use of their purchases, power to them!
But I honestly don’t care if you buy or not, that’s your choice and needs need to be fullfilled. What I do care about is how this behaviour is interpreted by manufacturers and shapes the market. As a consequence this influences component choice and prices.

Did you know that the OPX came with plastic case included? I still use it to this day, and including it makes sense because keeping the corners of your device intact is a real concern! It also comes with a decently bulky/robust power-to-USB adapter, and a FLAT USB DATA CABLE with CABLE TIE ATTACHED. Honestly, I didn’t even know about these things when I bought the phone, but it makes life strictly better. IT MAKES SENSE!
The USB cable is flat, allowing it to easily roll up, it has an unremovable rubber tie, so tying it up is simple and a no-brainer, and it has data lines, which makes it a normal USB cable.
You cannot imagine the mental pain when I see or use another of those Samsung charger/cable combo’s, it’s so flimsy, non-intuitive, and provides a cheap experience. That doesn’t make sense, you bought a 600 dollar or more expensive device! You deserve better!

Forward to 2021, and the market dynamics changed. Anything Apple does is without customer input, for better or worse, and this triggered other manufacturers to blatantly copy again. Not just copied, but soullesly copied which is the worst kind.
Adapters, and cabling, aren’t included in the package anymore because of environmental reasons. Phones now have 3 or more eyes on their back because of … reasons. The 3.5mm audio jack is gone, without explanation, and NOT EVEN REPLACED WITH STEREO SPEAKERS BY DEFAULT.
Oneplus removed the physical alert slider from their “Core Edition” (CE) phones. Because, according to them, that’s a feature that only makes sense above a certain price.

If you haven’t figured out by know, the capitalized text contains bits that are important to me. The stylization screams both “YOU WANT TO HAVE THIS AS A CONSUMER” and “WHY IS THIS NOT CONSIDERED MINIMUM LEVEL”.

Now what?

As mentioned at the start I’m looking for a new smartphone, something more ‘current’ that I can make use of for the next few years down the line. I have a few dealbreakers at this moment;

• About 5inch, or 14cm by 7cm
• OLED, or derivative, screen
• 1080p, because small form factor
• NFC, for security keys
• USB-C for cable compatibility, notwhitstanding the USB standards compatibility mess
• Physical buttons
• Physical alert slider
• Optical image stabilization, because pressing the screen/a button to take an image rotates a phone
• Screen-on time of 10+ hours, because I don’t take a charger everywhere with me
• 3000 mAh battery, or the 10+ hours (previous point)
• Clean operating system experience, so I have trusted updates during security updates window
• 3 years, or more, of security updates
• Rootable, because I like to own my hardware
• Around 300 euro price, which is in my opinion a decent price for gadgets
• Adapter + charging cable included
• Plastic case included
• Popular/decent chipset and -components so the open source community can take over software updates when the company says byebye

This is given a certain baseline

• IP65 or higher
• Stereo-audio, I believe headphone jacks on phones aren’t necesary because the analog signal converters are too small and bad anyway
• Fingerprint sensor, and in-built Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
• Front and rear camera’s
• Decent thermal design
• Good grip on device and or case
• DOESN’T BEND ON MINOR STRESS (looking at you Apple) APPLIED TO DEVICE
• Latest release of the operating system available

Well, to be honest, I don’t really feel any phone currently available fits my requirements. Flagship killers are no more, rather they are talking as if they decide what a flagship should be. I don’t want to support that market.
I’ll have you know that I’d rather have no smartphone than participate with something I don’t agree with.

So at the moment I’m stuck. My current phone has pretty old hardware, but still works. I do run a security risk without kernel updates, but thank overlord Google for keeping my userspace patched and safe. Google does get all my data in return, so it’s only fair. I cannot run any fancy 64-bit apps, but browsing the web and listening to Spotify will fortunately still be possible for the forseeable future.

Let’s hope that by the end of this year some exotic things come out, and/or prices drop. The latter makes compromise a bit easier. If not, I’ll eventually go back to a straight forward flip phone. I’m guessing that route will make life simpler again, but I’ll be back to reading soap ingredients during toilet breaks.

I publish immediately for peace of mind. I regularly revisit my content to look for opportunities to improve.

“Pension plan? NO man! Money in equals money out, live a little!” - Bad idea factory