From China with love: can Oppo and OnePlus upend the way we buy smartphones?

Chances are, the smartphone in your hand or pocket was designed by a company based in America, Korea, or maybe Taiwan. Most consumers have probably never even looked at or considered a smartphone from a Chinese company.

Companies like Huawei and ZTE have tried for years to break in to the high-end markets in the US and Europe without much success. Lenovo decided that it would just be easier to buy Motorola than make a go at the US alone. Meanwhile, upstart Xiaomi has garnered a lot of attention and press, but it has yet to bring its wares outside of Asia.

Oppo is a lesser-known name, but it claims to be the “second-most profitable mobile phone company” in China. Now Oppo and its recent offshoot OnePlus are taking a different approach to bringing that success out of China and conquering the West. Instead of partnering up with carriers and kowtowing to their demands, both companies are selling their latest phones, unlocked, directly to consumers. The $499 Oppo Find 7a and $299 OnePlus One offer competitive, high-end performance at prices significantly lower than other, better-known smartphones. Google has taken a similar approach with its Nexus line of smartphones, but those are designed primarily as vehicles for the latest version of Android. Oppo and OnePlus are just focused on selling a lot of phones across the globe.

With the Find 7a and One, the two companies should have no trouble doing just that. And they might just change the expectations we have of smartphones we purchase.

At $499 and $299 unlocked, respectively, both the Oppo Find 7a and the OnePlus One undercut competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One by a significant margin. (Between the two, the OnePlus One’s much lower price and friendlier software makes it the more attractive option, considering the hardware is basically the same.) They both offer high-end experiences and impressive build quality that rivals or surpasses their more expensive competitors. My time spent using them in the past few weeks has taught me that perhaps I don’t need to spend almost a thousand dollars for a cutting-edge smartphone (provided the maker is willing to forgo profits on the device, of course). If you're looking to buy a smartphone for under $400, I can't think of a better option than the OnePlus One, and that includes Google's Nexus 5.

But that doesn’t mean Oppo and OnePlus will have an easy time breaking into the mainstream markets in America and other western countries. WIthout the support of carriers and their massive marketing machines, most people outside of the Android smartphone enthusiast community will likely never even know that the Find 7a and OnePlus One exist. HTC’s struggles in recent years have proven that marketing may be the most important factor in selling smartphones today, and carriers are a huge part of that. OnePlus’ plan to pass up profits on the hardware itself is a risky maneuver, especially since the One doesn’t have any cloud services that buyers can pay for after the fact.

Then there’s the question of buying a smartphone sight-unseen from a manufacturer you’ve never heard of. The vast majority of Americans still purchase their smartphones at carrier stores and generally choose the phone recommended to them by the sales rep. Questions also remain about support and if something goes wrong: what happens if my Oppo or OnePlus One stops working? It’s not like I can just walk into an Apple store or my local carrier store to get a replacement.

Still, with more and more carriers offering incentives for buying phones at full price and not signing a contract, companies like Oppo and OnePlus are poised to be attractive options for those looking to save money but not compromise on experience. It’s something that smartphone buyers in Europe have known for years, but we’re just figuring out here in the U.S. It will be really interesting to see what OnePlus’ next phone is like and if it will have a smaller, more manageable size that’s more popular in America than in China. If OnePlus’ grand experiment is successful, it could signify the beginning of the end of the carrier store and how many people buy their smartphones today. It could also significantly shake up the status quo of what we expect from a sub-$300 smartphone.

After all, with the OnePlus One costing nearly $400 less than a comparable smartphone from Samsung or HTC, which would you choose?

Lead photo by Sean O'Kane.

At $499 and $299 unlocked, respectively, both the Oppo Find 7a and the OnePlus One undercut competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One by a significant margin. (Between the two, the OnePlus One’s much lower price and friendlier software makes it the more attractive option, considering the hardware is basically the same.) They both offer high-end experiences and impressive build quality that rivals or surpasses their more expensive competitors. My time spent using them in the past few weeks has taught me that perhaps I don’t need to spend almost a thousand dollars for a cutting-edge smartphone (provided the maker is willing to forgo profits on the device, of course). If you're looking to buy a smartphone for under $400, I can't think of a better option than the OnePlus One, and that includes Google's Nexus 5.

But that doesn’t mean Oppo and OnePlus will have an easy time breaking into the mainstream markets in America and other western countries. WIthout the support of carriers and their massive marketing machines, most people outside of the Android smartphone enthusiast community will likely never even know that the Find 7a and OnePlus One exist. HTC’s struggles in recent years have proven that marketing may be the most important factor in selling smartphones today, and carriers are a huge part of that. OnePlus’ plan to pass up profits on the hardware itself is a risky maneuver, especially since the One doesn’t have any cloud services that buyers can pay for after the fact.

Then there’s the question of buying a smartphone sight-unseen from a manufacturer you’ve never heard of. The vast majority of Americans still purchase their smartphones at carrier stores and generally choose the phone recommended to them by the sales rep. Questions also remain about support and if something goes wrong: what happens if my Oppo or OnePlus One stops working? It’s not like I can just walk into an Apple store or my local carrier store to get a replacement.

Still, with more and more carriers offering incentives for buying phones at full price and not signing a contract, companies like Oppo and OnePlus are poised to be attractive options for those looking to save money but not compromise on experience. It’s something that smartphone buyers in Europe have known for years, but we’re just figuring out here in the U.S. It will be really interesting to see what OnePlus’ next phone is like and if it will have a smaller, more manageable size that’s more popular in America than in China. If OnePlus’ grand experiment is successful, it could signify the beginning of the end of the carrier store and how many people buy their smartphones today. It could also significantly shake up the status quo of what we expect from a sub-$300 smartphone.

After all, with the OnePlus One costing nearly $400 less than a comparable smartphone from Samsung or HTC, which would you choose?

Lead photo by Sean O'Kane.