If there’s one thing we know about OnePlus as a company, above all else, they’re brazen. They’re not afraid to kick up some dirt and stir commotion and controversy. This much is obvious, and can be observed by simply remembering the early days of the OnePlus One before launch with their comparison campaigns on social media which pitted their own product against other top tier flagships from popular OEMs. To be fair, the OnePlus One turned out to be a pretty great device with quite a bit of popularity, even if the invite system and the contests were universally despised.
OnePlus is taking their boldness to a whole new level though with the OnePlus 2, recently claiming the phone is “ahead of its time” and calling it the 2016 flagship killer. Yes, OnePlus is confident that their device which is set to be announced next week and launched before the end of the year, will be above and beyond devices from the likes of Samsung, Motorola, LG and others from next year. If we break the device down into hardware specs to compare against potential hardware found in devices from 2016, we’ve got the Snapdragon 810 processor, 4GB of RAM, a fingerprint scanner, and the USB Type-C connector port. Short of the USB Type-C, the other listed specs here can already be found in current devices like the ASUS ZenFone 2, the LG G Flex, HTC One M9, Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge and others, albeit not all those specs are in every one of those devices. Focusing on the Snapdragon 810, this is a chip which first debuted in the LG G Flex near the beginning of the year, and likely by the time consumers get their hands on the OnePlus 2 it could easily be September which will be the Fall, making this a rather dated chip to power the device. Not a bad chip mind you, just not quite so bleeding edge as OnePlus would have you believe, and on that note, it could be argued that the Snapdragon 810 is hardly future-proof. In terms of the fingerprint scanner, this is to be placed inside of the home button seen on the front of the device in recent Tenna images, something which many consumers probably recognize from Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, and this on top of a similar looking back to the previous model OnePlus One. Again this is a little more behind the times than ahead of it.
So, the question becomes, is the OnePlus 2 really ahead of its time? Or is it more in line with what we’ve already seen from other smartphones, making it more of a match to current and upcoming devices from this year? USB Type-C is certainly a future proofed trait, but it might be more accurate to say the device would be ahead of its time if the processor was next gen ahead of the Snapdragon 810 and if there were other features which we haven’t really seen yet in other devices. What do you think?
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