It’s not enough for OnePlus to copy the iPhone 7 Plus’s design — on its own, a decision that may explain the OnePlus 5 screen issue it won’t properly acknowledge or fix, but it looks like the company is also copying Steve Jobs’s way of dealing with an iPhone flaw.
Jobs famously said that you’re probably “holding it wrong,” and that excuse went viral. He was trying to explain why the iPhone 4 would lose cellular signal when held in a certain way. That was the Antennagate scandal that haunted Apple in the months after the phone’s introduction. Fast forward to 2017, and OnePlus now claims that your eyes are to blame for the OnePlus 5 jelly effect while scrolling.
The move comes only a few days after labeling the issue as “natural.” What happens with the phone is that it’ll show a jelly-like effect during scrolling. OnePlus said it’s not a software or manufacturing defect, and therefore it won’t be fixed.
https://twitter.com/OnePlus_Support/status/883047144021798912
What OnePlus did not say is that the issue can’t be fixed. An investigation showed that OnePlus inverted the display, and “fixed” this problem with the help of software. That’s how the jelly effect was born.
The decision to invert the screen might be a consequence of the OnePlus 5’s iPhone 7 Plus design influence paired with one other OnePlus decision. Apparently, the OnePlus 5 uses the same display as the OnePlus 3T, but the screen can’t be mounted like on the OnePlus 3T. And OnePlus didn’t order a new part for the handset, one that would not require screen inversion tricks, choosing to recycle the existing design.
Saying “the screen so called jelly effect is caused by the user’ eyes persistence of vision (visual staying phenomenon or duration of vision)” is not a viable explanation and it’s as disrespectful to buyers as the “natural” remark. If it’s all in the eyes of the beholder — or natural — why is it that only the OnePlus 5 users are complaining about it?
Furthermore, Phone Arena notes that persistence of vision tricks should not be perceived on a slow-motion video.
The right thing to do is to admit there’s something wrong with the display and try to fix the problem in the future. That would probably be the “Never Settle” way of handling this PR mess if those words mean anything to OnePlus anymore.
And by the way, Apple did fix the antenna issues after that famous quote from Jobs.
UPDATE: OnePlus reached out to BGR to explain that the comment posted on the official OnePlus Support Twitter account is not endorsed by the company and has been deleted. OnePlus still describes the jelly effect as a “natural” occurrence.
“The OnePlus 5 uses the same level of high-quality components as all OnePlus devices, including the AMOLED display. We’ve received feedback from a small number of users saying that at times they notice a subtle visual effect when scrolling. This is natural and there’s no variance in screens between devices,” a statement from OnePlus reads.
