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OnePlus shows Xiaomi how to gracefully accept defeat
- Xiaomi posted a Twitter poll, pitting MIUI 9 against Android One. MIUI 9 lost by a landslide, and Xiaomi deleted the results.
- OnePlus performed a similar poll, pitting OxygenOS against pure Android. Pure Android also won by a landslide.
- However, OnePlus did not delete the poll, and instead thanked users for their feedback and committed to making OxygenOS even better.
On February 7, the official Xiaomi Twitter account asked users in a poll which is the preferred Android variation — Android One or MIUI 9. Unsurprisingly, the final results netted a clear win for Android One at 57% of the vote, putting MIUI 9 at only 43%.
The poll itself is not super exciting, as anyone with even the slightest interest in Android will tell you that the closer to stock you get, the more users like it. But what happened next was sure interesting: Xiaomi deleted the poll.
That’s right, only three days later Xiaomi took down the tweet and the poll. One can assume that the company wanted to hide its shame in losing. But don’t worry; after all, this is the internet, so we have screenshots of the final poll results before Xiaomi removed the tweet forever:
Two days after Xiaomi deleted the poll results, February 12, OnePlus must have decided it wanted in on the action. Szymon Kopeć, a OnePlus employee, posted a remarkably similar poll on Twitter — which do you prefer, pure Android or OxygenOS?
At first, things looked like they were going to end up in OnePlus’ favor, with OxygenOS leading the charge. The CEO of OnePlus, Carl Pei, even chimed in to say, “Don’t delete this poll,” as both a subtle dig at Xiaomi and a celebration that OxygenOS was doing so well.
But, eventually, the poll shifted in favor of pure Android, resulting in similar numbers to the Xiaomi poll: 58% pure Android to 42% for OxygenOS.
What did OnePlus do next? If you guessed “delete the poll,” I’m sorry, but you don’t win a prize today. In fact, it did the opposite; it accepted defeat with style and grace:
Thanks for an overwhelming amount of responses. I’ve read all your comments. Appreciate the positive and, especially, negative ones. It motivates us for further work on OxygenOS and helps improving the product. Cheers!— Szymon Kopeć ??? (@szymonkopec) February 14, 2018
OnePlus as a company sure has had its share of blunders over the past few years, like the time it went on the wrong side of gender politics, or when its credit card processing got hacked. But this poll and reaction to the results are pure gold, and a clear win for OnePlus… and a clear loss for Xiaomi.
Now seriously, OnePlus, update OxygenOS so users can choose theme colors from a color wheel instead of from the eight horribly misguided color choices you currently give us. If you make that change, OxygenOS will get my vote: