OnePlus One to Moto G Plus (5th Generation)

For the past 2 years, I’ve used a OnePlus One. That changed on Tuesday, May 30th, when I got the Moto G Plus (5th generation).

I got my OnePlus One (abbreviated OPO) on May 12, 2015. I got it because my wife’s Nexus 4 was dying, so she got my Moto G (2nd generation) and I got an upgrade. After shopping around a good bit, the OPO seemed like the best balance of price and performance for me.

Broken OnePlus One

Even after 2 years, I was and am still pleased with the purchase. The OPO remains to be a solid device. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be upgrading if it weren’t for the damage from general wear and tear on the phone. It’s extremely responsive and powerful, I’ve just dropped it so much and had the kids do so much harm to it that it’s falling apart. As much as I hated to pay for a new phone when I still had a working phone, it was getting more and more to the point that “working” was a stretch.

Screen Damage

The biggest issue is that the capacitor in the touch screen is damaged. Probably 6 months ago, I dropped the phone and the impact caused the capacitor to stop responding along the bottom half inch or so of the phone. This included the hardware buttons below the bottom of the screen. Fortunately, I could change the screen rotation settings to allow me to turn the phone 180 degrees upside down, and turn on software keys. This meant that I could still use the home, back, and multitask buttons, I just had to turn the phone upside down to do so.

One problem with turning the phone upside down is that not all apps allow full rotation. For some apps, I had to drop down the notification shade and load the battery settings or something else before I could rotate the screen. This usually wasn’t a tremendous hassle, but it did get very annoying over time. Not only that, but it made some apps completely useless. The T-Mobile Tuesday app only allows customers to claim rewards by pressing a button at the bottom of the screen. Guess what I can’t do.

Soon after the bottom of the screen stopped working, a smaller band along the middle stopped working. This wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except that it contained many of the options that pop-up menus use. Want to continue from where you left off in the SNES emulator? Oh, did you press restart? No. No, I did not. For some menus, I could spam press on or around the option I wanted and eventually get it to work. Menus with multiple options vertically were basically impossible, though.

In addition to buttons within the dead band, it interrupted scrolling. I had to scroll in either the bottom half or top half of the screen. If I scrolled across the band, it would often be interpreted as a press. Scrolling through my music queue, I would randomly press songs. Reading through my Facebook feed, I would accidentally like or share posts.

Mobile Data

Occasionally, my mobile data would cut out. The display would indicate how many bars I had, I assume for calls or SMS, but I would have no internet connectivity. Sometimes, this would be preceded by a prompt for which SIM card to use (but I only have one). Other times, it would happen without prior indication.

No matter how it happened, I wouldn’t get mobile data back before restarting the phone. Turning the mobile antenna off and on didn’t ever seem to work, and even restarting the device didn’t always work. A few times, I had to restart probably 5 or more times before I finally got data access again.

Many times when my mobile data would die, the power button wouldn’t bring up the power menu. The phone would just restart immediately. This seemed to roughly coincide with whether I got mobile data back after a restart, but I never tested it for certain.

Other Problems

With me listening to so much music, I frequently used my 3.5 mm auxiliary port. Eventually, the port got something stuck inside, so I couldn’t connect anything. Fortunately, I had already gotten some bluetooth headphones for work, and I could use my Zune whenever I needed to use standard headphones. Still, it was annoying that I couldn’t use such a prolific port.

Sometimes, the phone would stop receiving notifications. I could still manually access apps and see messages or whatever, but they wouldn’t be on the lock screen or my notification bar. Eventually, I would get a “System UI has stopped” error, and then I would get a flood of notifications. This seemed to happen when I would press the multitask button, but I never figured out what actually caused the notifications to stop.

Any of these problems wouldn’t be a huge deal individually. Collectively, though, they made for an absolutely abysmal experience. I didn’t want to upgrade when I could get done what I needed to do, but the process was not a smooth one. Even the simplest task was a struggle with everything broken on the phone. It became increasingly obvious that I needed a new device.

OnePlus 3T

For several months, I had my heart set on the OnePlus 3T. It was a sequel to the device I was already using, on an OS that I really liked, for a reasonable price. I originally wanted the OnePlus 3, especially for a flat $400, but it was immediately discontinued when the 3T was released. At $440, the 3T was a little steep, but honestly worth it for the specs.

While the OnePlus 3T is objectively worth $440, that doesn’t mean I want to pay that much for a phone. There are no carrier subsidies or payment plans from OnePlus, you have to pony up the cash immediately. After taxes, accessories, and all that jazz, I would probably be paying close to $500 for the phone. Half a grand is better than many other flagship devices, yes, but that’s a ton of money to come up with on the spot.

Eventually, OnePlus started teasing announcements about a sequel device. As time went on, the OnePlus 5 became less of an idea and more of a reality. While this is great for people who plan on getting cutting edge devices, I saw it as a possibility that OnePlus would drop the price on the 3T to clear out stock. It happened with previous devices despite being sold on thin margins, so why would the 3T be any different? The 3 and 3T shared a body design, so it makes sense that they could use a lot of the same components and not have to clear out stock for the 3 before launching the 3T.

Certain that OnePlus will drop the price of the 3T when the 5 comes out or shortly before, I continue using my janky OnePlus One. There’s no need to get a middle step upgrade before getting the actual device I want. If they drop the price to $400 or less, I’m sold. Great phone for an even better price.

Several phone deals came and went during my wait. There were great prices on a wide variety of phones that were all pretty good. The Nextbit Robin got a price cut, which was something I kept an eye on before. A coworker offered to sell me his used Moto Z Play, which has the neat Moto Mods ecosystem. The Moto G5 Plus launched, but I had a bad experience with the 2nd edition Moto G so I wasn’t necessarily interested in it. Still, I stayed vigilant. I would get a OnePlus 3T when they dropped the price.

Not the OnePlus 3T

On the evening of May 25th, OnePlus announced that they would be discontinuing the 3T. When I saw the post on their Facebook page, I hoped that the announcement would have some information about a price drop. Sadly, there was no price reduction intended. Production of the 3T would come to a full stop, with sales of the OnePlus 5 beginning in the near future.

I was frustrated and let down. The OnePlus 3T was the phone for me, but I just couldn’t see paying $440 for it. I was so sure that they would reduce the price, but this was basically confirmation that they would not. While I could go ahead and buy one of the last 3T devices at full price, I really didn’t want to. With so many cheaper devices available, paying that much for a phone seems unnecessary.

What to do now? I had put all of my eggs in a basket that was quickly falling apart. It was generally accepted that the OnePlus 5 would be more expensive than the 3T, possibly as high as $650. If I wasn’t going to pay $440 for the 3T, I definitely wouldn’t be paying any more than that for the 5.

I started doing some research on other budget Android phones. Mr. Mobile and MKBHD are both reliable video sources, among a number of text-based sources. The Huawei Honor 8, ZTE Axon 7, and Alcatel Idol 4 S were considered some of the best budget devices available at the moment. They each had their flaws, but were honestly quite good for the price. However, the recurring device that every source seemed to mention was the Moto G5 Plus.

Maybe the Moto G5 Plus

As much as everyone seemed to recommend the Moto G5 Plus, I didn’t want to give it a chance. Sure, the Moto G line has traditionally been really cheap, and arguably better than other devices in that price range. But the Moto G2 I had was just garbage. It was laggy, didn’t always work quite right, and I just wasn’t interested in getting the same thing over again. It had been quite a few years since I had my G2, but I doubted much had changed.

Still, every reviewer kept mentioning it as probably the best budget option. MKBHD described the Moto G5 Plus as, “Motorola not really cutting down from higher end flagships, but more building up as high as they can for a certain price.” Maybe it could be different than my previous experience. With the higher end version having 4GB of RAM, that’s actually more than the 3GB of RAM in my OnePlus One.

I originally considered the lower end version, since $230 is easier to pay than $300. However, there was an Amazon Prime option to get the higher end version for only $240 with lockscreen ads. I have an Amazon Fire Tablet with ads, and they really don’t bother me. If I can save $60 for something I can easily ignore, why not? Worst case scenario, I don’t like them and I can pay to have Amazon remove the ads. Ultimately, I wouldn’t be out any more than buying the ad-less version originally. You can’t root the Amazon version, but my rooting days are behind me. The Motorola ROM is apparently pretty close to stock, so I wouldn’t have any desire to root anyway.

Neither version of the Moto G5 Plus has NFC, but that isn’t a huge deal for me. I sometimes use tap and pay, but probably not more often than once every few months. If I have my phone on me, I probably have my wallet on me as well. Also, the 5.2” screen is a little smaller than the 5.5” of my OnePlus One. I would’ve liked to have felt the Moto G5 Plus in hand to see it for myself, but surely 0.3” wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Moto G5 Plus

Maybe the Moto G5 Plus wouldn’t be so bad. I did some research, found a cheap case and screen protector. With the whole kit and caboodle, I could get the phone and accessories for $267.64 shipped. Compared to the $440 of the OnePlus 3T for just the phone, that’s a steal. At that price, I could almost get two of the Moto G5 Plus for the price of a single OnePlus 3T.

Finally, I decided to pull the trigger on the purchase. I don’t have Amazon Prime, but I know several people who do. I got a friend to place the order for me, and paid him for it via Google Wallet. He ordered the phone on Friday, May 26. The package would have shipped on Monday, May 29 had it not been Memorial Day and work being closed for the day. Instead, I got it on Tuesday, May 30.

I’m cautiously optimistic. As much as I originally wanted nothing to do with the Moto G line after the G2, maybe Motorola has stepped their game up. With so many positive opinions from reviewers, the Moto G5 Plus can’t be terrible. I’ll eventually put together a proper review of the Moto G5 Plus, but I’m hoping that I really enjoy it.