OnePlus has confirmed its first flagship phone for the year will be arriving towards the end of the second quarter. That makes OnePlus 6 – as the device is being unofficially referred to right now – sticking to its usual launch schedule of around June. The revelation was made by the company chief executive Pete Lau at CES.
The OnePlus 5 too made it to the market during June with the improved version of the same, the OnePlus 5T arriving a few months later. The company had however stated earlier they won’t be offering two flagships during the same calendar year, which makes anything of the likes of OnePlus 6T more of a remote possibility right now.
As for the likely specifications of the upcoming OnePlus 6 device, details are almost non-existent at the moment except that it would have the new Snapdragon 845 at its core. That again isn’t anything that is too hard to guess given that it happens to be the best option available at the moment. Lau too said there aren’t any other options available to them.
For the record, Samsung has also confirmed their next flagship; the S9 too will be built around the SD 845 chip though its own Exynos 9810 will be offered in some markets.
Coming back to the OnePlus 6, other features are all speculative at the moment. However, with an under screen fingerprint scanner likely to emerge as the most game-changing feature of 2018, it again is something that the Chinese manufacturer would perhaps like to include on the upcoming phone as well.
Camera performance is another area the company would likely continue to devote their resources in to differentiate their offering from others. However, with OnePlus 5T having already achieved the design theme that was so in demand in 2017, it remains to be seen if they have something new to offer on this front. Another and a safer option for them will to further refine the 5T design with say even thinner bezels if offering anything too radical becomes prohibitively costly.
OnePlus meanwhile has also stated they look forward to establishing a partnership with leading US carriers to further push acceptance of their phones. That, however, is easier said than done given the current world political order where the Chinese are often viewed with a degree of mistrust. Huawei recently found that out when its deal with AT&T fell flat at just the last moment.
