In mid-December last year, former Oppo VP Pete Lau announced the creation of a new smartphone company, named OnePlus. The fledgling manufacturer immediately set itself an ambitious goal, to build the best possible smartphone in the world. Nothing like dreaming big.
Now, barely a month later, OnePlus has taken to its social networking channels to say it will launch its first device before the end of June. On Facebook, a picture was posted telling us the phone would be sold internationally, along with the words “Good things come to those who wait. Luckily, we won’t have to wait that long.”
The OnePlus smartphone will be named the OnePlus One, which has probably made HTC sit up and take notice, and apparently will be, “Built using only the best components and 2014 flagship specs, both inside and out.” This statement is followed up by an equally bold one regarding the phone’s style, with OnePlus promising “Industrial design wise, we’re confident our phone is more attractive than just about any other on the market.”
That’s a whole lot of confidence, but building a smartphone up to this extent will raise expectations through the roof, making them even tougher to meet. Telling us the OnePlus One will have 2014 specs makes us think of a 5-inch screen or larger, a 1440p resolution display, a Snapdragon 805 or equivalent processor, and a camera with at least 13-megapixels. It’ll also need to out-pose the HTC One. Sounds great, but also expensive and difficult to achieve.
According to a report published by the South China Morning Post, Qualcomm has indeed signed up to supply processors to OnePlus, but aside from news the phone will have 4G LTE, nothing else has been confirmed regarding the hardware specs.
The operating system has been revealed though, and unsurprisingly, it’ll be Android, just not the version you’ll find on the Nexus 5. Instead it’ll be CyanogenMod’s software. Familiar to Android devotees, CyanogenMod slims down Android to speed up performance, while opening it up for easy and extensive customization. Recently, Lau’s old firm Oppo introduced a limited run Oppo N1 with CyanogenMod installed.
It’s hard not to get excited about the OnePlus One superphone, or be taken in by the company’s positivity. However, Canonical recently tried to do something very similar, and it didn’t end favorably. We’ll just have to wait until summer to see if OnePlus can live up to its own hype.
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