That brand is 12 y/o and has between 3 and 5% market share, roughly the same as Motorola. Whether or not they make it doesn't matter, what matters is how they started as total amateurs with no brand and a beloved aftermarket ROM and where this got them.
Oppo itself released their first smartphone in 2011. So not total amateurs, you're right on that, but it was no Apple or Samsung or HTC. They managed to appeal to geeks and started a niche brand that went mainstream.
Market share declining albeit slowly, customer opinions of each device release declining over time as well & they are generally on the more expensive end of the phone market.
Most of the tech enthusiasts who helped them kick off by buying for modding like cyanogen don't go near them now.
They used to be my recommendation to non technical friends and I doubt that I am the only one who long ago changed to other recommendations.
The company needs to revisit their roots in my opinion.
Bazitte is solid. Added PWA/electron wrappers for any web apps I frequently use (netflix/youtube/etc.) and added them as non-steam-games to my library. Have a steam controller and it is about as easy to use as any streaming stick.
Yup! And if you are a little more technically inclined, combine it with nix home-manager/flakes/etc. and you have an entirely declarative, immutable, reproducable setup that largely works ootb and is easy to deploy.
Nvidia has been doing some work with open source drivers lately so hopefully support does improve.
In a similar vein, I dislike forcing of the USB-C port. I think we are going to approach a wall (especially concerning foldables) where the thickness of the port is a limiting factor and it should be up to the user to decide if its worth going thinner with a proprietary port.
If customers choose to go with USB-C, a thicker phone, larger battery etc, that is all and well, I feel that will happen anyways. But it should be up to the customer & manufacturer, not the government.
Yeah, no. In this specific topic, we've had plenty of time to establish that it is isn't the case. Power is not balanced between individuals and manufacturers.
USB is a horrible mess but for the first time in my life, I can travel with one charger that works with all the devices I take with me. I could even travel without a charger and be pretty sure I will be able to find one at the destination.
People around me seem as happy as me about this and it wasn't the case as long as manufacturers were not forced to use USB. Nobody complains about the port form factor. That's simply not a concern.
Yep. Whenever I travel, I bring a single 60W USB-C charger that charges my laptop, my phone, and even other random gadgets I might need to bring with me.
I have an older micro-USB Kindle that annoys me. Of course, for most trips I never need to charge it, as long as I charge it before I leave, so for all practical purposes it's fine.
My wife just bought an iPhone 16 to replace her iPhone XR, and if it weren't for her AirPods from a few years ago, she'd be able to avoid carrying around that extra lightning cable too.
This might feel like a minor, first-world problem, but it is annoying. And when you scale it up, there's so much waste with so many people needing two cables, one of which could have never been manufactured, had we all been using the same ports all along.
At minimum, sales haven't been great, & their upmarket push into becoming a mainstream premium brand hasn't perfectly worked out for them