racyne

Let’s put the obvious out first: I’m related to the CM team, as a very small-time official maintainer of a device now deprecated (sunfire) because of a lack of support from upstream. So, to a certain extent, you all will jump on the bandwagon that is the OMG THIS DUDE IS SO PARTIAL TOWARDS CYANOGEN IT’S UNREAL and all of that bullshit. I expect it, and to a certain level I actually welcome it; it will keep me humble.

So, it is with gleeful excitement and a small bit of pride that I welcomed the announcement of the OnePlus’s first-ever official product, the One, a Cyanogen-powered Android device. To see +Steve Kondik ‘s brainchild in a commercial device, complete with out-of-the-box Google Apps instead of having to acquire said applications through funny means is no small feat; to that, I tip my hat to the +Cyanogen Inc. staff.

A glee level only equivalent to the one when I got my 2013 Google Interviews would be needed to describe the moment that I received, and subsequently insta-ordered within 5 minutes, my Sandstone Black 64gb OnePlus One order voucher. Come on, that badass of a device, at that price, with those specs? I NEED IT. I just NEED it.

And in retrospect, after 3 hours with the thing? I was mostly right, but in some aspects that are sadly core to my device usage… I might actually be just wrong enough to cast doubt.

Device

The device itself is, let’s be honest, a slab of sexy. With a back I can only describe as “Nexus One meets soft-touch sandpaper [in a good way]”, this device holds good in your hand, is decent, and is operable. Then, you’d be hard-pressed to find a lack of standard stuff. Microphones galore, speakers up the wazoo, cameras where ya need ‘em, the power button placed just where it needs to be for one-handed operation, the device itself is neither the Next Big Thing nor a contender for the Blast-from-the-Past-of-the-year Razzie (hello Canada). The screen is expectedly decent, the camera too, and in the end, it’s a well-rounded piece of awesome. The device itself is good and I won’t really mess with the fact that it. just. works.

Software

This is the part where I expect each and all of you to say YOU’VE GOT A HARD-ON FOR CYANOGEN EVERYTHING! YOU MOD RANDOM DEVICES FOR BREAKFAST AND MOD LAPTOPS AT 30K FEET IN THE AIR. And you know what? You’re right. I’ve always preferred developer-level customisation and “fun things” to “Stock Experience”, except for the Nexus level starting with 4.3; I never really felt the absolute NEED to mod devices starting with 4.4. The only reason I modded my hammerhead was to acquire root so I can debug an NDK project I’m working on more easily than fixing a REAL great mess of a build output with Gradle. Fact is, there was a time when I modded devices before actually eating Nutella in the morning, and to an extent, I’d still do it.

So you will not be surprised when I say that the software in it is awesome. Cool over-the-top customisability, very decent out-of-the-box user experience, and overall badass simple-mode-goes-geek-level when I want it. I simply will not sing the praises of this, only because I’d sound even MORE partial to them. And I’m right to do this, because I’ll sound like a freaking fanboy… at least more than right now.

The Bad

So how come this. How come there’s some bad? Is there REALLY something bad with this device? It would seem so, as after 3 hours with the device, there are two things that get to me in a bad way, and it’s in such a “bad way” that I actually would have considered NOT getting the device in the first place. Those two points are at the very least completely personal opinions and peeves related to my tastes, so the two are YMMVs. These points are only my experience, and for some people like +Arthur Brownlee IV and +Chris Sewell it would actually be a SELLING POINT; dem freaking giants.

First: the device is large. Like, freaking large. It’s actually near-phablet, and I actually loathe the Note series not because they’re Samsungs (and that’d be enough for me to hate ‘em), but because they’re phablets. I nearly pulled the trigger on a Sony Z Ultra once only because it was a Z device that could have replaced my aging Nexus 7 first-gen. So, basically, it’s big. I can operate the One with one hand, but just barely, and I have pianist fingers; it’s too freaking big!

Second: this device has a presence in hand that I just don’t get. I held a Z1 Compact in my hands, and to be fairly honest, the Z1c has a better presence, a better “ohai user, lemme help you with stuff” feeling than the OnePlus One. The 1+1 is more like “sup brah, use me” directly, sort of like an in your face USE ME image… That leads to the real core of the feel: the heft. Call me classic, but I like that my personal devices have a size and weight that are not necessarily proportional, but arranged in such a way that they validate the existence of the device. Imagine that you would have one device that had its weight distributed equally all over, and one that had its weight distributed with the “core” of its presence in your hand, like it was saying “Hello user, I am on you” instead of “surfing on your hand and in the air NO HANDS ‘MA!”. The images make no sense, but if you imagine the thing, it starts making sense.

The End, for now

In the end, those last two points have been a peeve of mine for the last devices. I preferred the N4 to the N5 in terms of heft and device feel, and it is sadly a renewed experience with the OnePlus One; but as I said, that bad experience is limited to only two factors that can actually steer others’ decision towards actually buying one. Provided nothing changes about my current impressions, I know I’ll be recommending the device to whomever wants a cheap, awesome performer that comes with a near-AOSP user experience enhanced with customisation up the wazoo and a really enjoyable screen, and to giants. For people that like a device to have a more defined and restrained, but self-explanatory, presence in hand, this may not be the best of choices.