All Sections

Could the best phone of 2015 be launched June 1st?

Update: The successor to the OnePlus One was originally thought to be launched at the beginning of June, thanks to the company’s social media teases – but now it seems that a Q3 launch is reality.

When OnePlus teased us with news of a big press event on June 1st, we naturally expected its newest phone, the OnePlus Two, to be officially announced. But now OnePlus bigwig Carl Pei has gone on the record to kill the buzz around the handset’s impending launch.

Sadly the much-desired mobile won’t be launched today as expected, with the company using its press event for other, still-secret purposes. Instead, the OnePlus Two will be revealed in Q3 2015, so we’ve got a few more months to wait. Bugger!

Original story: The OnePlus Two could be officially unveiled on June 1st according to a promo which the company shared on its social media channels, and we couldn’t be more excited. After all, last year’s OnePlus One was an immensely intriguing handset, partly thanks to its eyebrow-raising specs for a very affordable price and partly because of its insane ordering system, which was initially invite-only.

The new teaser includes an image of a OnePlus One which has been half erased and is in the process of being re-drawn, captioned with “time to change”.

The post itself stated: “We’re always looking for ways to shake up the tech industry. And we think it’s time for a change. Find out more June 1.” And as if we needed more fuel to the rumour that a new OnePlus phone is incoming, the company also changed its profile image to a photo of the OnePlus One with a banner reading “Farewell” across the middle.

So far we don’t know anything concrete regarding the next OnePlus phone, including what it’s actually going to be called (OnePlus Two? OnePlus Another One? OnePlus One Equals Two?). However, we expect the device to feature some notable hardware improvements over the first device, which was itself a surprise hit.

Rumours began swirling months ago regarding the One’s successor and at the end of last year we heard that the OnePlus Two would be powered by a Snapdragon 805 and that it would offer 32GB of on-board storage, a 16-megapixel primary camera and a 3,300mAh battery.

Things appear to have changed since then, however, with company co-founder Carl Pei asking users on Twitter how much the new device should cost if it comes with a Snapdragon 810.

One thing we definitely hope changes – but which may still sadly be in place – is the ridiculous invite system to snag one.

While annoying as hell for users, the invite system actually worked well for the company, allowing it to manufacture in line with demand to ensure that overheads were kept to a minimum. It also had the pleasing knock-on effect of creating demand for the unknown device, with invites changing hands for not insignificant sums of money on auction sites.

Obviously we’ll know more on June 1st, when we’ll be covering the OnePlus Two launch live.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *