My precious five-month-old phone is now obsolete, and that does not make me happy
Back in June, maverick Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus launched its best ever smartphone (at the time), the widely praised and highly regarded OnePlus 3. What made the phone so special though? It was a combination of good build quality, top-end hardware and great software, and all of this came at a competitive price tag that made a lot of other smartphones seem unnecessarily expensive and plain overpriced. This is a phone that looked forward and took user feedback seriously, and this made for a phone that you can confidently expect to last you a long time. All of this was enough to convince me that the OnePlus 3 has what it takes to be my next phone, and I picked up the device shortly after launch.
And now, exactly five months after the launch of a phone that has served me well, OnePlus has launched a new device that makes my precious OnePlus 3 obsolete. The new OnePlus 3T is a souped-up version of the OnePlus 3 that takes all the best bits of hardware that became available between June and today. It also takes away some of the pride I had in owning my phone, with me now facing the very first-world problem of having slightly dated hardware. Also read: OnePlus 3T vs OnePlus 3: Here’s what’s new
Let’s be clear, the OnePlus 3T isn’t a huge upgrade over the OnePlus 3. There are only four key differences between the two phones. First, the OnePlus 3T has the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC, which is realistically just a slightly improved and higher clocked version of the Snapdragon 820 that can be found in the OnePlus 3. Second, the OnePlus 3T will be available in a 128GB variant, which does not bother me specifically since 64GB is enough for me. Third, the front camera sensor has been bumped up from 8 to 16-megapixels, thereby allowing you to further zoom in and clearly view the pimples on your face. Fourth, the battery is now a 3,400mAh unit, up from 3,000mAh on the OnePlus 3. While new buyers will certainly want the OnePlus 3T over the older model, there isn’t a lot of incentive for existing OnePlus 3 owners to sell their phones and upgrade to the latest variant.
Additionally, OnePlus has announced that both the OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3 will receive the Android Nougat update at the same time and follow a similar firmware update schedule going forward. This alleviates most of my fears, as I’m now assured that OnePlus won’t forget about me and my fellow buyers when it comes to software support. As such, the OnePlus 3 remains a top-notch phone that is still flagship material, and the existence of a new, slightly better device does not make the older device any less capable.
So why am I disappointed? Because I can and should be. Because I was expecting to have a current-generation device for at least eight-to-nine months before it was rendered obsolete, but I only received five months of gloat-time. And now that I know there is a faster variant out there, my phone feels slightly and mostly unnoticeably slower. But just because I can’t notice it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be upset about it. Instead of having about 100GB of free storage space, I’ll only have about 35GB available to me to do absolutely nothing with. The three selfies I shoot in a year won’t be as detailed. And my battery will die at 6:30PM every day instead of 6PM. I want the best, but I can’t have it, and that makes me sad.