OnePlus is a terrible flagship phone brand, but a great mid-range one
From flagship killer to mid-range specialist: what happened to OnePlus?
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
I've been a OnePlus fan ever since its arrival as an enthusiast brand back in 2014, but I must admit, early 2026 is a weird time to be rooting for the company. I no longer feel OnePlus will come up with a proper flagship phone, one that doesn't have its wings clipped or corners cut.
The latest OnePlus 15 proved that going forward, high-end OnePlus phones will be a step beneath Oppo's flagship devices, even though both are mostly similar in terms of features and design.
At the same time, OnePlus devices are mounting some serious value in the mid-range segment, proving to me that OnePlus has repositioned itself as a mid-range brand.
OnePlus, flagship brand no more
Once, all OnePlus had were flagship phones. No mid-range OnePlus Nords, no OnePlus Aces. Every device was a high-end flagship with top-of-the-line hardware, excellent software, and most importantly, significantly better value and more aggressive pricing than that year's flavor of Android and iPhone rivals.
You just knew that getting a OnePlus device would get you a genuine Android flagship that will beat the competition without breaking a sweat and will save you some dollars in the process.
Flagship killers, and rightly so!
Yet, this changed for the worse five years ago. You can pinpoint two root causes for that decline. First, one of the co-founders of OnePlus, Carl Pei, resigned from the company in late 2020, and second, OnePlus and Oppo began building a strategic partnership that saw their software and hardware R&D teams combine forces in 2021. The latter essentially meant that OnePlus has tied the knot with Oppo, and that changed the once-enthusiast brand forever.
Ever since the OnePlus/Oppo partnership began, the flagship phones that OnePlus launched on the market were getting less and less competitive, while also jacking up the prices to mostly the same level that Galaxies, Pixels, and iPhones occupied.
There was no more "flagship-killing," and OnePlus had become the very thing it had sworn to destroy all those years back. The start-up spirit and the core credo of the company were both gone. Instead, each year we got a re-skinned Oppo phone with worse cameras and a slightly different interface. At the same time, rivaling flagships paid much more attention to key flagship pillars like design and camera performance, both weak aspects of recent OnePlus flagship devices.
That's pretty much why OnePlus' flagship phones no longer feel "right."
Stacked mid-range presence
There's a silver lining to all this, fortunately.
While the premium space is seemingly surrendered in favor of Oppo, OnePlus now has a host of devices that fit into the mid-range and upper mid-range segments beautifully.
Take the latest OnePlus 15R as the perfect example for that. A Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, a massive 7,400 mAh battery, and 80W fast-charging with a charger in the box starting at $700? Not too shabby at all! Sure, you don't get a particularly versatile camera, as the OnePlus 15R lacks a telephoto and has a very narrow ultrawide one, but it does the job for occasional, everyday picture-taking.
That's what the upper mid-range is for: an overall solid package that has one obvious drawback in comparison with most flagships out there. OnePlus Nord phones are also mostly underrated mid-range phones that I don't see around often, but from my brief experience with these, the value is excellent in this range as well.
Should we be worried?
So, as a OnePlus fan, witnessing the fall-off of the company's flagship presence has been disconcerting but has made one thing perfectly clear: OnePlus is no longer chasing the premium segment.
It doesn't intend to contend against Samsung, Apple, and Google head-on but has quietly become a strong presence in the mid-range and the upper mid-range, where its phones make more sense today. Here, the compromises feel justified, and the pricing feels mostly justified.
The problem with OnePlus isn't that it's no longer a flagship brand, it's normal to change with time. The issue is that it hasn't come to terms with that new reality just yet.
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