I want to make it VERY clear, this article is NOT about the phone and in no way a review of this device. It's about the unboxing experience I personally had with my device.
Two nights ago I finally got my OnePlus Nord. It was a bit of a wait as the phone launched weeks ago, but wasn't available for purchase till last week and even though I ordered on launch day, my delivery date ended up being a week out.
I was very excited to try out a new OnePlus phone at an aggressive price point. The one thing OnePlus has always managed to do is make the entire phone experience feel premium regardless of cost. I still have my first OnePlus device, the OnePlus 3T. I can still remember how good the quality of everything was with that phone. It astonished me how they pulled it off.
Everything from the phone to the box felt premium, like a flagship. The phrase "flagship killer" actually meant something back then.
As time went on OnePlus pricing kept inflating and their quality also remained consistently high. OnePlus has always paid attention to the small details and ensured that their fit and finish was impeccable. Even back in the days when their "flagship" halo phones cost well under $400.
Circling back to today, I finally was able to film the OnePlus Nord unboxing. I was taken by surprise because the experience from the start felt off . The box looked very tiresome (the material used doesn't look or feel that good in person) and the box was dented up pretty good on the corners and sides. This is not something that is out of the ordinary. Boxes get banged up in shipping all the time. I wasn't worried and honestly didn't give it much thought because it's happened to me many times in the past before.
I moved on and started unboxing the phone on camera. As I progressed through, I started noticing the materials used were just not that up to the same standards of OnePlus phones of the past. This was incredibly weird to me because OnePlus was boasting on their hype train Instagram account about how high quality the box was because two people could stand on it.
Well when I started opening the box, the top came off instantly without any resistance. I was actually shocked at how little resistance there was. When I unboxed my OnePlus 8 Pro it literally had to shake the life out of that box to get the top to come off. I had to cut a good 15 seconds of that out of my OnePlus 8 Pro unboxing video. This OnePlus Nord box top just came right off like it was one size too big.
The next thing I noticed was when I got the documentation out of the case that was in the box, the sim card tool just dropped right out. It wasn't properly seated in it's place. Now this could have just been one box where this happened. It's not a big deal at all, but what it shows me is that there is a lack of attention to detail.
This phone clearly doesn't have the same level of quality in the unboxing experience that OnePlus phones of the past had, even when they cost less than this.
Another aspect that was very disappointing was that the bottom of the box was not properly glued down. It just fell right out and it's clear that this box was not made right. Either the materials used were poor in quality or the assembly of this box was rushed and not done right.
In all honesty it does not matter which one it is, it reflects poorly on the brand. It detracts from the experience and makes it clear that you didn't pay for the better experience.
This being a "budget" phone is very apparent from the start. A couple of weeks ago I said that mid-range phones are a lot more exciting right now because you get to see where brands cut corners a lot more clearly.
This is a very clear corner that OnePlus decided to cut. Too many things were peculiar in the unboxing experience to just chalk this up to it being one random outlier. This is not the experience I as a consumer want when opening up my brand new phone, regardless of price.
-Ankit