OnePlus has seen its revenues grown to nearly $500 million in recent years and while that is likely to be dwarfed by Apple with just its revenue share on in-app purchases made by Pokemon Go players, the company continues to grow with low-priced, high-quality smartphones available in well over 40 countries. The company tweeted today that its newest device will be unveiled on November 15 and will boast a Snapdragon 821 processor when released.
OnePlus’ storied history is almost comical at times
OnePlus was founded by former Oppo vice president Pete Lau and co-founder Carl Pei in late 2013 in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The company’s plan was to provide higher quality smartphones than the price pointed suggested asking early customers to join them with the motto “Never Settle. Lau explained his company’s mission by saying “we will never be different just for the sake of being different. Everything done has to improve the actual user experience in day-to-day use.”
OnePlus released its first offering, the OnePlus One, in India in April of 2014 before looking to Southeast Asia in early 2015.
The company has had no small share of controversy, and the OnePlus One couldn’t be sold in India for a spell owing to a legal injunction. Once that was resolved the company got embroiled in a bit more controversy with its “Smash the Past” campaign where the company asked invitees to film, themselves smashing their existing phone with the promise of a OnePlus One for $1. But, uninvited users began smashing their phones having misunderstood the promotion which was criticized over waste concerns.
OnePlus to unveil the newest smartphone on November 15
While many woke up this morning reeling from the election blues, OnePlus was on Twitter promoting its new product with a tweet that read, “T-7: The @Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 (2.35GHz) is coming your way. Find out more on November 15.”
For what is expected to be a lower end offering from OnePlus, though no pricing information has been made available, the inclusion of the Snapdragon 821 is quite impressive. Not only is it Qualcomm’s most powerful chip for powering mobile devices but it was Google’s choice to power its critically heralded Pixel and Pixel XL. While Qualcomm’s 820 processor is impressive in its own right, the 821 is reported to be at least 10% faster and will soon see wider use than simply OnePlus and Google’s offerings.
OnePlus has said little about the specs for its new phone, but if the online rumor mill has got it right the phone will be called the OnePlus 3T which would likely be a ungrade on the OnePlus 3 rather that a whole new offering. Prior to this morning’s tweet, Qualcomm had acknowledged that OnePlus was set to use its Snapdragon 821 processor while the company had remained largely quiet.
Given the fact that the new handset will offer Android, expect Android 7.0 Nougat to run out of the box. Additional rumors suggest that storage options up to 128GB will be offered and the phone will also include a battery bigger than the OnePlus 3 at 3,300mAh.
Given that the OnePlus 3 had a good value price point, more than adequate camera, fast charging, NFC offerings for payments, and 6GB of RAM, I would expect to see nothing less that this with the possibility of more when we’re given additional information next week.
Lastly, the OnePlus Community App was finally made available to users in the Google Play store today.
