OnePlus was founded back in December 2013, so they’re a very young company. Despite being a relatively young company, OnePlus has managed to create a name for themselves really quickly. They released the OnePlus One handset back in July 2014, which was their first smartphone and is regarded as one of the best handsets of 2014. That smartphone did ship with Cyanogen OS pre-installed and was extremely affordable, while offering premium specs. The OnePlus One was extremely popular and is still available for purchase directly from the company. That being said, OnePlus has announced the One’s successor back in July of this year, the OnePlus 2, and judging by the amount of invitation requests the company received, this device is quite popular as well.
We’ve already talked at length about the OnePlus 2, and have also reviewed the device if you’d like to check that out. Interestingly enough, this is not the only OnePlus smartphone we’ll see released this year. The company has confirmed that another OnePlus-branded smartphone will be arriving before the end of 2015, and judging by the company’s latest teaser, the OnePlus X will be launched on October 29th. This handset is said to sport a somewhat lower specs than the OnePlus 2, but judging by the recently-leaked TENAA and OppoMart listings, its specs will be quite solid. The OnePlus X is said to sport a 5-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) display, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable internal storage. The device is reportedly going to be powered by the Snapdragon 801 quad-core SoC, just like the OnePlus One. The 2,450 mAh battery has also been mentioned in the listing, and same can be said about the 13-megapixel rear-facing, and 8-megapixel front-facing camera sensors. Android 5.1 Lollipop will come pre-installed on this phone, and OnePlus’ Oxygen OS will be available on top of Google’s operating system.
We still don’t know how much this phone will cost, but the latest rumor said that it might be priced at $220 in China (it is probably going to be a bit more expensive elsewhere), which would make it really affordable and quite compelling, especially in markets like India. OnePlus has recently announced that they’re joining the ‘Make in India’ project, which means that they’ll manufacture devices in India. Well, OnePlus X might be the first OnePlus smartphone to be manufactured in that country, and could also be quite affordable over there. India is quite a specific market, and a device priced at $220, equipped with such specs and offering solid performance could sell extremely well in India.
I’m making a lot of assumptions here, but it all adds up. The question remains, however, will OnePlus enforce the invitation system for the OnePlus X, or not? Well, that wouldn’t make all that much sense for the company, now would it! They’re enforcing this system for OnePlus 2 (their flagship), while the OnePlus One is currently available for purchase to everyone. I personally don’t see that much sense in the invite system for the OnePlus X, as that might affect the phone’s sales. If OnePlus opts to offer this device for open purchase, and price it somewhere in between $220 and $250, the OnePlus X could be really popular in India and compete directly with the competition. Meizu, Xiaomi, Asus, Motorola, Lenovo… and many more companies have really compelling offerings in that price range already released in India, so it will certainly going to be interesting to see if the OnePlus X rises to the challenge.