Every now and then a new player enters the mobile market and surprises us. Last year we saw the first phone from Chinese manufacturer Oppo, the Find 5, make its way across the pond for the first time in the company’s history. Since then we’ve been incredibly impressed at the sheer levels of quality that Oppo has put out, rivaling any in the industry when it comes to material quality and build strength. Recently their latest flagship, the Oppo N1, was released to much fanfare, and even has a special CyanogenMod edition to prove to other manufacturers that new things can be done in what can be seen as a somewhat stale industry. Now we’re hearing about a new contender in the industry called OnePlus, and it looks like they are set to unveil their first smartphone over the course of the next few days. No this isn’t some weird Google+ mashup like that other social network’s phone, it’s actually a new brand spun-off from Oppo, and it looks like they are really planning on shaking things up in a whole new way.
On the official OnePlus website they’ve got a little teaser page up, featuring the image above. You can see all the flagship devices from 2013 pictured there, stacked on top of eachother, some in better shape than others. It’s flanked with the tagline:
“Too often we make compromises. Too often we make tradeoffs. Too often we settle.”
Those are some pretty serious words, and it seems that OnePlus is out to make them true. They seem to be ready to disrupt the market with some sort of super device that is also low cost; a concept out of reach for all but a few phones. What we’re wondering is just how far they are going to go with this concept. Are we talking straight up Xperia Z1 specs or some other high-end phone that includes not just a top-of-the-line processor as the Nexus 5 has, but also a state-of-the-art camera too? What cost are we talking as well? Is it going to be Nexus 5 pricing or will it be even lower? Then of course there’s the question of what carriers it’ll work on worldwide, and if it’ll ever see the light of day in the US. Hopefully OnePlus makes its announcement soon so our heads don’t explode with speculation!