[OnePlus 6 Guides, News, & Discussion] Robbo.5000:
I'm not sure I understand the initial media plaudits from yesterday's unveiling.

With the latest flagship phones so far released or announced, I feel this is very much a step backwards from the competition (though, rather a smaller step forward than everyone else)

Realistically, this is a most minor iteration. We have the obligatory upgrade to the latest Qualcomm flagship SoC, then..?

We have more screen real estate, though at the expense of the notch and what, initially, appears to be a relatively minor upgrade to the camera, when compared to everyone else.

Aesthetically, I personally think, this is by far the best looking OnePlus device and it's really on a par with the competition here. I don't have an issue with the look of the notch, though having never used a phone with a notch, I may well hate it in use.

Elsewhere, it seems to lag behind. Of all the competition, i.e. those with the Snapdragon 845, OnePlus seems to be the least innovative in its use. Nowhere do they advertise use of its AI / ML capabilities. I'm not suggesting they go down the Asus route and call everything AI, but at least show your making use of it.

I appreciate that most 'AI' features are mostly marketing nonsense, but some of it appears very useful. We are seeing phones with translation apps using AI, rather than connecting to the web. We're seeing phones use AI to learn how people use the phone, and continually change how they manage apps memory and power usage to improve both performance and battery life.

OnePlus have not made any claims towards anything like this, so if they are doing these types of things, why keep quiet.

This 'season' most of the innovation has been centred on the use of AI with the camera and so far we've seen some very amazing results from that. The big hitter being the Huawei P20 pro, though an honorable mention goes to the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S also, especially considering it's budget flagship price (very much in the OnePlus 6 range).

OnePlus have always lagged behind in the camera department. It seems one of its big sacrifices in order to keep the prices so low. Last year's 5T, the first OnePlus with a dual lens arrangement, was routinely savaged by critics and considered on par with the average mid range phones. So here is where many considered it needed to vastly improve.

Initial impressions do seem to suggest that great improvements have been made. However, it seems like they've really only arrived at the point other flagships were at last year. Considering the huge leap forward AI has taken in-phone photography this year, it seems that OnePlus still have a lot of work to do in order to catch up with the rest and, this year, still seem just as far behind.

Hardware wise, mobile technology is now very mature, so we're only ever, mostly, seeing small iterative improvements, so phone manufacturers can only offer iterative updates, from a hardware perspective. And this is what we've come to see over the last few years.

This year the majority of mobile innovation, on flagship models more so, has come through the use of AI, something OnePlus seems to have strangely overlooked with this latest release.

This year, this iteration feels like something I'd expect from a top end, mid range phone, not from something that used to sell itself as a flagship killer.

With some serious hard work from the OnePlus software team, much AI innovation seen elsewhere could be rolled out to the OnePlus 6 in the future, which would see it much more competitive in the flagship phone sector. Though, I imagine they'll wait until the 6T to implement such changes, which may give the competition too much of a head start.

I'm currently on my third OnePlus device but if I do decide to upgrade this year, I doubt I'll be spending my money on the OnePlus 6. I feel it's time for a change, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S anyone?

Though if by some miracle I actually win the xda competition, I'll be happy to keep the phone for the foreseeable future :)