OnePlus 2- the “flagship killer”
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| One Plus 2 Camera Sample 1 - Happy Doggo |
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| One Plus 2 Camera Sample 2 - Boulevard |
Announced in July 2015, the OnePlus 2 was propounded as being the next flagship killer. Launched alongside the Samsung Galaxy S6, the phone boasted top of the line specs with a SnapDragon 810 processor with 3/4 gigs of RAM, top of the SnapDragon line circa 2015; a 13MP rear camera with an IR laser focus, and a 5MP front camera for selfies. It was one of the first few devices that came with a fingerprint sensor and was quite an attraction. The phone came with Android 5.0, lollipop out of the box, and a 3300 mAh battery to power the device. The phone sported 2 variants, one with 16GB internal memory and 3GB of RAM and the other with 64GB internal memory and 4GB of RAM.
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| One Plus 2 Camera Sample 3 - Super Blue Blood Moon during the Lunar eclipse |
On with the user experience then- I have been using the phone since January 2016 – and the experience has been a rollercoaster of disappointment and amazement, the disappointment mostly due to OnePlus’ inability to support their own device and amazement at the online community’s persistent effort at keeping this 2015 “flagship killer” up and running.
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One Plus 2 Camera Sample 4 - Fireflies (High shutter speed for long exposure photos.)
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Like I mentioned above, the phone came with Lollipop out of the box. Using the phone felt amazing, to be honest. The battery life on lollipop was the bomb. I could go all day and some more on a single charge. Idle drain was next to non-existent. The UI was stock android, and therefore easy to use. The fabled fingerprint, was such an eye-opener. I never knew I really needed a fingerprint sensor on the phone till I actually had one. The fingerprint implementation on lollipop was OnePlus’ own, as the fingerprint sensor became mainstream and integrated with the OS only after marshmallow. The phone was devoid of NFC, which was a manufacturing decision taken by OnePlus. Not a big loss, NFC is barely present in India. Then came the marshmallow update, which frankly ruined the phone. The battery life plummeted, a phone that lasted a day or more on a single charge would now drain faster than a pot of water with a hole at the bottom. The only plus point was the fingerprint implementation shifted to native android APIs instead of OnePlus’s implementation of it, which was an eye opener because the fingerprint was now blazing fast. Hoping for more updates to fix the issues, OnePlus instead chose to focus on launching the OnePlus 3, than fixing the issues on the OP2. The Marshmallow update was a miserable failure to say the least. The users of the phone hoped for nougat to fix the issues and kept hoping for the next version of android to improve things. There was a tirade of users hoping for an official nougat build from OnePlus, since a lot of their hardware uses proprietary binaries (such as the camera), and without an official nougat build with updated binary blobs, a custom rom wouldn’t function to its full potential.Sadly, that never came. |
| 2 years later... |
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| One Plus 2 Camera Sample 5 |
Here’s where the community stepped up. Various developers, most popular ones being Shreesha Murthy and LineageOS in a herculean effort, built a version of nougat for the OP2, which helped various other teams such as Dirty Unicorns, AOSPextended, AOSiP and others to build their own version of nougat for the device. As of today, there are multiple Oreo builds for the device which allow it to relive its glory days with a stable battery and latest android features. LineageOS offers the most stable experience in terms of battery life and bug fixes, but there are various other ROMs that offer great features with similar features or more.  |
| One Plus 2 Camera Sample 6 - Low ISO with long exposure |
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| One Plus 2 Camera Sample 7 - Bonus Doggo |
As a user of this device, I’d rate it a solid 8.5/10. Even after 3 years of release, the phone runs as good as some new phones. And the community support for this device has been outstanding. I’d use this phone for as long as it lasts, simply for the reason that the community supports this device to run as good as OnePlus themselves could never get it to.
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