The verdict is in: Android fans don’t want to lose OnePlus

I’m happy to admit I’m a big OnePlus fan. While not a current user, I’ve had a few of the brand’s smartphones over the years, and recently gave my old OnePlus 10 Pro to my mom. She loves it too, especially after it recently got a surprise Android OS update beyond its promised allocation. I’d certainly miss OnePlus if it left the Android smartphone market, but I assumed you might be more split on your level of support for the brand. According to our poll, I may have assumed wrong.

As those of you with your finger on the pulse will be aware, we didn’t ask this question as a pure hypothetical. A surprising report last month claimed that OnePlus may be winding down its smartphone operation, and we polled you on your feelings about it in our coverage. OnePlus has since dismissed the report as false, so it might be nothing, but my colleague Joe Maring argued that losing OnePlus would be bad for Android and the US smartphone industry as a whole. The crux of his argument in his subsequent article was that, like it or not, the OEM often leads the way with innovations that push its rivals, and that competition in such a huge tech field is generally a good thing. We included the poll there, too.

The results are now in, and it looks like you overwhelmingly agree.

Almost two-thirds of you made it clear that losing OnePlus would mean losing one of your preferred Android brands, but support for its continued presence in the market went further than that. Given that 15% who didn’t use OnePlus nonetheless felt it would be bad for competition if the report were accurate, this only leaves around one in five of you who wouldn’t be sorry to see the brand depart the scene.

That’s a fairly emphatic show of support for OnePlus’ smartphone line, though we have to caveat the results in a couple of ways. First, selection bias suggests that OnePlus fans are more likely to have read our coverage and participated in the poll. For any readers on the fence, Joe’s article makes a fairly compelling case for why bystanders should want OnePlus to keep churning out handsets, and it may have swayed a few undecided voters.

Still, the results are conclusive enough to suggest OnePlus has the support of those paying attention, and perhaps add weight to OnePlus’ assertion that the unsubstantiated report of its change of course was wide of the mark.

Some of you took to the comments section of our articles to expand upon the reasons for your vote, with a lot of the discussion circling back to competition and value. A couple of readers backed Joe’s assertions that, even if they don’t love every recent OnePlus release, the brand has still played an important role in pushing things like battery tech, charging speeds, and pricing. Reader hartsock.dana summed that up neatly, saying OnePlus has been “an excellent value proposition for a long while,” adding that their previous phone lasted five years before they upgraded.

The broader feeling was that losing another Android brand — especially one willing to try different hardware approaches — would make the market worse off overall. And, just to emphasize the OnePlus fandom out there, a couple of comments reminded us that they disagreed with our less-than-favorable review of the OnePlus 15. They’re welcome to disagree with us on that one, and we’d certainly be sad to see OnePlus go, too. After all, the OnePlus 13 was our Editor’s Choice winner for best phone of 2025.