‘Sick and tired’: OnePlus boss hits back at damning OnePlus 3 review

The global director of OnePlus has hit back at a negative review of the OnePlus 3, slamming complaints that the phone’s display is sub-par.

Carl Pei, the co-founder of OnePlus, posted an extensive rebuttal to Reddit, describing how he’s “sick and tired” of negative sentiments about the company’s phone. The post was made in a thread about Anandtech’s OnePlus 3 review, a damning assessment of the recently launched phone that claims the screen is one of the worst ever tested.

Here’s are two excerpts from the review:

“Unfortunately, the display really kills the phone for me. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it’s the worst display I’ve examined during my time at AnandTech, as despite the Nexus 6’s faults, it didn’t have the ghastly blue appearance of the OnePlus 3.”

“If display accuracy doesn’t matter at all to you, it may be possible to overlook it, but for anyone who cares even the slightest bit, the issues with the OnePlus 3’s display will be too severe to live with.”

Related: 6 reasons the OnePlus 3 is a genuine Android flagship killer

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In his post however, Pei said that too many reviewers are associating the OnePlus 3’s low price of £309 as evidence that the company cheaped out on components.

“With our relationships in the supply chain, we know the bill of materials of all other flagships,” wrote Pei. “Out of all the devices that the OnePlus 3 gets compared to, it is one, if not the, most expensive to make.”

Pei admitted that his team “probably haven’t done good enough of a job” at explaining the pricing model, specifically selling devices at – or close to – manufacturing cost. He also blamed consumers and reviewers for not understanding that using a Full HD display instead of a 2K display isn’t necessarily cutting corners.

“I understand that sometimes, when our products don’t have the highest absolute specs, it might look like corners are cuts. This happens when people don’t understand the product reasoning that went behind a choice,” wrote Pei.

He added that people “simplify and use mental shortcuts to make sense of the world around them”, saying that the perception is that price equals quality.

Several users hit back at Pei’s rant, arguing that a Full HD display isn’t good enough for virtual reality, which is ironic as the company launched the OnePlus 3 alongside a custom-built OnePlus Loop VR headset. But Pei tried to counter these arguments by saying that the firm isn’t backing VR just yet:

“It’s very early days for VR. There’s a lot of potential in the current platforms, but none have matured yet. In the future, two major platforms will remain, but we can’t tell which ones will win out at this moment. We can’t ‘push VR’ because there’s currently no direction to push in. If we make a big bet on the wrong VR platform, and it ends up not taking off, we’ll be betting our company on this.”

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What do you think of Carl Pei’s mega-rant? Let us know in the comment.