OnePlus have made a name for themselves for a number of reasons. One of those reasons, of course, was bringing to the market a device which costs significantly less than the major players, but does not offer significantly less. Instead, the OnePlus One came touting some of the best specs (for the time) but at a much reduced $300 and $350 launch price (depending on storage chosen). As such, the continued rumors surrounding the launching of their follow-up device has been big news in the android (and wider tech) community.
The OnePlus 2, as it will most definitely be called, is a highly anticipated device. Probably by none more so than the OnePlus community and as such, any news on its specs, appearance or design will immediately attract attention and debate. In fact, OnePlus recently launched a contest where the winners could be one of the first to get their hands on the highly-awaited device. Not to mention, that since then the first images have also started to emerge. To be fair, these are not quite images but instead silhouettes of the device which are being used to further promote the device launch. Of course, from the image, not a whole lot can be taken from the design. In fact, some may argue that the silhouette looks quite a lot like the silhouette of the One. Although, in fairness that is still a stretch to state.
What will be important, is what the device comes packing. It is largely been rumored that a number of the features will remain the same as on the One. These are mostly thought of as the 3GB RAM and the 1080p display. One interesting change which is being reported is that of the introduction of the Snapdragon 810 from Qualcomm (up from the Snapdragon 801 on the OnePlus One). This is a highly contentious move on the part of OnePlus, as the Snapdragon 810 has been rumored to come with some notable heat issues and therefore, it will be interesting to see how it performs on the OnePlus 2. Other rumored specs include the likely introduction of a fingerprint scanner. Although, again, these has typically been a feature which has not proved very functional or popular on previous android smartphones and it may also be a contentious aspect on the One if OnePlus cannot provide a stable and well-working scanner. Not to mention, that unlike the OnePlus One, the OnePlus 2 will certainly not be launching with Cyanogen OS, but instead will come running on OxygenOS, which although was a stripped down and close to stock OS, many thought that it felt a little too close to stock. This year, we have already seen Samsung do well with their follow-on device, the Galaxy S6 and we have also seen HTC receive a lot of criticism for their follow-on device, the One M9. It will be interesting to see which side of the fence OnePlus ends up falling on.