I remember the good old days when Byrne or I would get the last reply in all threads on the first page in the early hours of the morning when no one else was around. Good times.

In concreto analysis required, but 12-13 is a good age to start.

I dunno man, I don't really follow opo phones, but I heard they the company that makes it has done some weird shit in the past. I wouldn't trust their proprietary os.

Yeah, not a fan of Oxygen OS myself. Tried it a bit when they released it for the OPO but went back to CM shortly afterwards. Any other great phones at a reasonable price that you're looking at now?

Since the Oneplus Two smartphone has been released a little while ago and I now have the opportunity to get my hands on one, I figured I'd make a thread about why I think I'm going to pass this time around.


1. The Operating System (OS) and software

While the Oneplus One (OPO) ran on the renowned CyanogenOS, the Two now runs on Oneplus' very own operating system, OxygenOS. While it appears to still be a rather barebones Android experience, the OS does not seem to stand out in any way. Other than the addition of the new Shelf feature, the OS seems to have its fair share of issues and has toned down the extensive customisation options that CM offers, lacking a theme marketplace and numerous features that are both cosmetic and practical.

While there already exists a modified CM 12.1 compatible with the Two, it appears to still have a large amount of bugs and does not take advantage of things like the fingerprint scanner and improved image stabilisation and focus of the camera. In addition, Cyanogenmod has already revealed that the One will be receiving the Marshmallow-based CM 13 as soon as it becomes available.

Additionally, a few of the One's features (such as PrivacyGuard and NFC) seem to have been removed. I know that neither of these are incredibly important, but it does seem like a step back rather than one forward.

I ran Oxygen on my One for a while when it was first released and found myself eager to get back to CM. Oxygen wasn't bad by any means, but it just didn't compare to what CyanogenOS had to offer. OS and software wise, I fear that switching to the Oneplus Two would feel more like a downgrade than an improvement.

2. The improvements seem minimal

There's a few new features that the OPT sports which I would personally quite like, being the notification slider, improved USB-C and the addition of the fingerprint scanner. Aside from that, however, there isn't much to really grab my attention.

While the screen supposedly has slightly better colors, is a little brighter and supports more viewing angles, it is still virtually unchanged from what the OPO has. Same size and resolution with no notable improvements there. Not a massive complaint as the One's 1080p screen is already great to look at, but still.

The battery capacity has been bumped up slightly, but nothing too impressive there either. The OPO already had a very decent battery life and some reviews even report that due to the increased processing power of the Two, there are little to no improvements in actual battery life.

The camera sports the same specs as the one present in the One, which is decent enough but nothing too spectacular. While laser autofocus and optical image stabilization were now added, comparing pictures side-by-side shows very little difference with the One.

The one thing that has been significantly amped up in the Two is its processing power and RAM. Benchmark test reveal that the Two can rival just about any phone currently on the market and that it is in fact a noticable improvement over the One. While nice, however, it doesn't seal the deal for me. My One is still incredibly snappy and responsive, tackling intensive multitasking and very demanding gaming apps with ease. Of course, faster and stronger is always better, but since I'm still so satisfied with my One, the increased power does not seem like it would make a world of difference to me.

3. Lack of certain features

While I very much realize that the OPT is still supposed to be a flagship killer phone at a budget price and that sacrifices will have to be made, there still are a few noticeable gaps in what the phone can do.

- No NFC.
- No fast / wireless charging.
- No changeable battery.
- No SD card slot.

Additionally, but absolutely not a necessity, more and more phones are simply sporting better features. QHD and 4k screens have been making their way to phones, certain cameras almost rival DSLR's, some phones are now waterproof and some of the abovementioned features are almost standard on Android phones these days. The OPT is by any means a very solid phone, but it does seem to be lacking certain very welcome features.

4. The price

Even though the Two still delivers incredible specs at a price that is significantly lower than almost all of its direct competitors, it does come at a €100 price increase over the One. While it still offers some amazing bang for your buck, the 30% price bump is still noticeable.

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I have to give it to Oneplus for again making a phone that manages to live up to the hype, but the Two just doesn't do it for me. The OPO blew me away with incredible specs, an amazing OS and great features at an almost unbelievable price. The Two still looks like a great phone, but it is lacking features that some of its competitors are sporting now, the OS seems to be a step in the wrong backwards and the improvements that they did make are not compelling enough to justify the increased price to me. As it stands now, I'll be holding out for the hopefully excellent Oneplus Three.

Any Android savvy people here (RC, Max?) have anything to say about the phone?

Also, as I was on my way home there was a news tent and camera crew by the American NBC News. Maybe you'll see me walk past in the background on their next broadcast.

I fully regret not wearing my sep7agon.net shirt right now. Would've been some good advertising.

That's what they're calling it and it was being reported as if a lot of things were closed.

Well, the reports are pretty exaggerated. I posted a bunch of pictures in the other thread for you to check out, if you want. I went through Brussels during the lockdown earlier and I didn't notice much of a "lockdown" other than there being less people and tourists around, more police and military personnel at certain locations and a few subway stations and public events being cancelled simply because they might be a more likely target, there really wasn't much going on. No full scale city under siege as some news outlets have reported, just a higher threat level due to possible terrorist attacks.

No, we're ungrateful sons of bitches.

I don't even know what that is.

Last two pictures just to give an impression of the city. Plenty of people around and things seem pretty normal. A lack of tourists, but that's about it.





Currently in class, everything is fine. Point of this thread was just to show that calling this a city on lockdown or under siege is a pretty big exaggeration.

Tanks and FNs everywhere?

Yeah, quite a lot of police and military personnel in and around the station. No pictures of anything close up, but here's some sort of armored vehicle with soldiers around it.

Nothing special on the train either, although it is pretty empty. A lot more people are coming out of Brussels than into the city at this time of day, but still very calm.



Praise socialism and statism for beautiful public transport.

Everything normal at the train station here so far. Waiting for my train now.



Apologies for picture quality. Low light is not exactly my phone's best friend.

Stay safe dude.

Will do.

As some of you might know, the capital of both Belgium and the EU, Brussels, has been on "lockdown" for the past few days due to terrorist threats. Intelligence services had information to conclude that the threat of an attack similar to that of Paris was serious, which led to security measures being taken that have been described as a lockdown in the press. My most recent class was cancelled because of this (as I'm now attending a campus in Brussels), but the one for tonight seems good to go.

tl;dr, heading into a city that has been (rather inaccurately) described as "under siege" by the international press just so I can learn stuff about trademark law. Ask me whatever.

Oh and I'll try to get some pictures up in this thread if it's not too dark out, which I fear it might be.

Quote from: Flee on November 25, 2015, 07:28:22 AM

Quote from: challengerX on November 25, 2015, 07:26:09 AM

Quote from: Flee on November 25, 2015, 07:16:35 AM

Quote from: challengerX on November 25, 2015, 07:14:47 AM

Quote from: Flee on November 25, 2015, 07:04:40 AM

Quote from: challengerX on November 25, 2015, 06:09:16 AM

Quote from: Flee on November 24, 2015, 10:36:14 AM

role with the punches

Well I'll be fucked.

How's the police state going?

Pretty alright. Threat level lowered in all of the country except for Brussels. Campus reopens today after being closed Monday and Tuesday.

I still don't understand what it is they were trying to achieve with that.

Even worse is how quickly they had your whole country on lockdown and everybody complied without question. Shows just how much the government is in control.

Not entirely sure what you've been reading about this but there never was an actual lockdown of anything.

Pretty much every new source has called it a lockdown along with Belgians themselves calling it a lockdown. Citizens to stay indoors, away from windows, schools closed, checkpoints and armored vehicles.

Depends on what you interpret as a lockdown then, seeing how the trains were still running, cars were still driving, citizens did not have to stay indoors or away from windows and so on. You could get in and out of the city just fine, businesses largely remained open as usual (and if not, it was almost entirely because of their own choice) and no one was forced to do anything. This whole ordeal happened because the intelligence services concluded that the threat of a terrorist attack similar to the one in Paris was very serious and real. Police and military shut down certain subway stations, and a bunch of events that were supposed to take place along with school activities were cancelled as they were considered to be probable targets. They reason the police and military have been patrolling the city is to deter attacks and be able to respond quickly if necessary, along with executing raids and arrests of people suspected to having been part of terrorist groups.

I live not even 30 minutes away from Brussels and go there on a pretty much daily basis at this point. In about an hour's time, I'll be heading into the city again for an evening class. As I already told my girlfriend's mom, calling this a lockdown makes it sound a lot more serious than what it actually is. If anyone would be interested and if it's not too dark out, I'll take some pictures of my journey into "a city under siege". It's definitely a lot more quiet there now, but to imply that this lockdown is much more than increased police and military activity along with cautionary businesses and people is pretty far out there.