Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has appointed former Flipkart executive, Mr. Karan Sarin as the head of marketing for its Indian operations, according to Economic Times. Before joining OnePlus, Sarin worked as the director of Flipkart’s gift cards business for over a year. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Sarin founded an enterprise software (SaaS) company named Perkylane prior to his assignment with Flipkart. The company reportedly provided on-demand employee benefits to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country. This is the second high-profile appointment in India for OnePlus in recent months. In November 2014, the company had appointed Mr. Vikas Agarwal as the general manager.
OnePlus entered India with its sole offering last year, the OnePlus One. The phone was a high-end device that came without the price-tag one would normally associate with a flagship. It got rave reviews in the media and quickly became a hit with consumers across the world, earning the title of “the flagship killer”. The phone was originally sold via invitations only, which helped it generate buzz in the online media, although in India at least, the phone is now up for open sales on Amazon. This year, the company is reported to be readying the launch of its second generation flagship, the rumored OnePlus Two, alongside a mid-range device to reach out to new geographies and customers.
As a refresher, the OnePlus One features a 5.5-inch LTPS LCD display with a Full HD (1080 x 1920) resolution with a 401 ppi. The device is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8974AC Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz, with an Adreno 330 GPU, and comes with 3 GB of RAM. The phone is offered in two storage options of 16GB or 64GB, and comes with a non-removable 3100 mAh battery. The rear camera on the OnePlus One comes with a 13 megapixel auto-focus sensor with dual LED flash, while the front-facing camera comes with a 5MP sensor. The device supports GSM, HSPA+ and LTE networks, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, NFC and dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. The device originally came with Android 4.4 Kit Kat based CyanogenMod 11S, but since then, OnePlus has updated the device with its own OxygenOS, based on Android Lollipop.