Taking a page from Samsung’s handbook of marketing – OnePlus has thrown out a leak or two just to keep us looking forward to their announcement of the OnePlus 3 today. In order to purchase one you go through the OnePlus Loop app, and later today at the company’s website for $519 CAD. There will be no invites needed this year, but how fast the OnePlus 3 will sellout is everybody’s guess – rumor has it that OnePlus has 1 million devices made and ready to ship. That would be a great number to start with, but if all goes as planned, they will need to keep working on additional units to sell.
The OnePlus 3 measures 152.7×74.7×7.35mm and weighs in at 158g. The anodized aluminum body will be available in Graphite – and shortly after launch, Soft Gold. It has a 5.5-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display with very narrow bezels. While it is only a 1080p display with 401 pixels-per-inch (PPI), the AMOLED display breathes new life into the OnePlus 2’s drab, washed out, LCD display – the contrasts and vibrant colors will help take your mind off the 1080p resolution. Providing the brains is the new Snapdragon 820 quad-core with two cores running at 1.6GHz and 2.15GHz. The OnePlus 3 will use an Adreno 530 GPU that should handle any graphics you throw at it. Coupled to that is 6GB of DDR4 RAM and 64GB of the much faster (three times faster) UFS 2.0 internal memory – there is no room for expansion.
The camera – once an afterthought on a cellphone – has quickly become a critical hotspot for consumers that have left their Point and Shoot cameras in the closet and now use their smartphones for all pictures. The OnePlus 3 should not let us down in this department with a 16MP Sony sensor, Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF), an aperture of f/2.0, with both OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and EIS (Optical Imagine Stabilization) that can process 4K videos. The front-facing camera is a large 8MP Sony sensor with a f/2.0 aperture for great selfies and video chats and up to 1080p videos. A 3000mAh non-removable battery powers the device. It has a Dash Charge feature to give you up to 60-percent of battery strength in only 30 minutes of charging. Also included is a front-facing fingerprint scanner, dual SIM slot, and NFC so the OnePlus 3 can finally handle mobile payments. It will be sold unlocked and can work with 3G and LTE on all the major Canadian carriers.