I have not used this platform to say anything negative about products but in this article, I am going to express my personal disappointment. Your experience may vary greatly. This could sound harsh and direct as I have not minced my words by using feel-good words.
First of all, I'll give you some context about the device I own. I have the OnePlus 9R which I got exactly a year ago. Great specs and that's what I considered while buying it. Before this, I owned the Mi A1 which was a mid-range device and ran Android One which is the pure android experience. It received regular patches and updates with no major bugs which I had to deal with. I had a good experience with it and as it got old I had the usual android old phone issue; difficulty in keeping apps in the memory and they would reload; nothing major. The only other device that ran the closest to pure android experience was the OnePlus and the Google Pixel of which I was a bit sceptical with service and the design was not very appealing. So I decided to upgrade and I had little experience with using the OnePlus 6 and 6t. It was a good choice objectively as OnePlus had a reputation for providing good hardware and the close-to-pure Android experience meant that I didn't have to learn a new skin and get overwhelmed with extra features and menus and I could just start using it. At that time the 9R was a decent choice with not being too expensive and also having the flagship specs which would last a long time. This is where the good things end sadly.
My good days ended with the hardware specs and the software experience is the downside of this story.
Even after purchasing a ₹40,000/- phone, the 9R has been getting the stepchild treatment. Buggy updates, late updates, unresolved bugs. I will get to my phone bugs in some time. Others might not face these same issues.
The story started when OnePlus announced that they will merge the ColorOS with the OxygenOS. This came in after people had committed to the ecosystem and did not want the other skins. OxygenOS is known to be light and snappy while being close to the pure android. We were consoled by saying that the appearance will not change much and the changes will only be on the back-end and this is mostly true. I am ok with the positive changes like some gestures borrowed from the ColorOS and some features and shortcuts too; especially the camera app and image processing. Even compared to OxygenOS, the ColorOS camera processing is much better.
I have issues with the bugs and confusion here. The OS is becoming much more unstable and buggy as the updates arrive. There were some hopes with the android 12 update which is even more buggy and even arrived later than the 8T on my 9R. People were getting updates but me. I had to manually install it then the later patches arrived with just patches and no bugs were resolved. The stepchild treatment that the 9R is getting is concerning for me which puts the reputation of the company in jeopardy. OnPlus is releasing multiple devices but is not able to handle the software and updates in time. Seems like they are trying to capture the market without the resources to scale up.
Issues In the 9R:
The camera app is full of bugs and unstable. The button to access the gallery from the camera is broken and just flashes after it is pressed. The image processing is very basic. In the day and age where iPhones and Pixel devices come with a 12-16MP camera with superior image processing perform much better than the 64MP one on the 9R. I personally use the gcam mod for better image captures. Even the night mode is worse. Night mode should provide appropriate lighting and not make a night photo look like it is taken with a flashlight. On the other hand gcam mod does a much better job with the same hardware. The image shows that it is taken at night with limited lighting which tells the story much better than just enhancing the brightness of the image.
Getting to the in-app camera, which is also worse than my old Mi A1. Even with a gyro and 64MP, the images turn out shaky which I am having a hard time wrapping my head around. WhatsApp images are just fine and the real issue is with the Instagram camera. What kind of software processing is going on just baffles me as the Instagram images are just horrible. Everything looks fine in the viewfinder and as soon as the image is captured, the image is over-exposed and unusable. This could be an Instagram issue as the third-party Instagram is fine but still, the in-app camera is subpar and does not justify the cost of the device.
The next thing is the google discovery page on the home screen. I don't know who uses it but I don't and I am not able to disable it which is very annoying and irresponsible. After disabling it the page is still there on the home screen but now just a blank grey screen.
The solution to this could be just a reset which sounds simple but is really difficult for someone with it being their primary device. This is just a thing that needed to be out there that OnePlus now is just a company with good hardware with horrible software experience.
If you are planning on buying a OnePlus device I would not recommend the main lineup but the Nord series which is much more stable than their premium devices.
