So I've had a OnePlus One for somewhere in the region of 18 months. It still gets regular software updates despite not being sold any more, although that may not be much of a useful data point given my phone is running CyanogenMod (as it was when I got it) but new OnePlus devices are shipping with OxygenOS, which is an Android fork controlled by OnePlus directly. The price was very good for the spec, and I understand that's also the case for the newer OnePlus devices, although I can't say I've checked directly.
OnePlus aren't top of the ethical charts; they ran a few dubious advertising campaigns when first starting up, and they have the same ethical issues around smartphone manufacturing that most smartphone companies have, but I don't think they're particularly better or worse than the likes of Samsung or LG. It's a Chinese company, if that makes any difference to you.
If I were looking at buying a new phone now, I think I'd be looking at OnePlus, Fairphone and Google Nexus; I don't trust the bigger brands (other than Google themselves) to give me a competitively priced Android device that'll keep getting updates. Unless the Nexus devices have become considerably cheaper again, it'd probably be a toss up between Fairphone's (debatably) better ethics and OnePlus's better price/spec.
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logmplus1.livejournal.com at 07:06pm on 30/03/2016![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I've had a OnePlus One for somewhere in the region of 18 months. It still gets regular software updates despite not being sold any more, although that may not be much of a useful data point given my phone is running CyanogenMod (as it was when I got it) but new OnePlus devices are shipping with OxygenOS, which is an Android fork controlled by OnePlus directly. The price was very good for the spec, and I understand that's also the case for the newer OnePlus devices, although I can't say I've checked directly.
OnePlus aren't top of the ethical charts; they ran a few dubious advertising campaigns when first starting up, and they have the same ethical issues around smartphone manufacturing that most smartphone companies have, but I don't think they're particularly better or worse than the likes of Samsung or LG. It's a Chinese company, if that makes any difference to you.
If I were looking at buying a new phone now, I think I'd be looking at OnePlus, Fairphone and Google Nexus; I don't trust the bigger brands (other than Google themselves) to give me a competitively priced Android device that'll keep getting updates. Unless the Nexus devices have become considerably cheaper again, it'd probably be a toss up between Fairphone's (debatably) better ethics and OnePlus's better price/spec.