The OnePlus 6T may not be released next year, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei revealed on Tuesday while answering a question on whether consumers should expect a T-branded revision of the company’s latest flagship every year from now on. An AMA held on the firm’s official forums earlier today saw Mr. Pei suggest that the decision to greenlight the OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 5T wasn’t based on some long-term product strategy but the fact that the company concluded “there’s enough new technology” that its customers will find “useful” should they upgrade from the previous handset. The BBK Electronics-owned phone maker has yet to decide whether it will follow up on the OnePlus 6 with the OnePlus 6T in late 2018, the company’s executive said, thus hinting that the next Android flagship from the company is not only already in development but that the firm is now also looking beyond it.
The OnePlus 5T went on sale in North America, Europe, and India earlier today, starting at $499. One of the firm’s officials recently revealed that OnePlus doesn’t see its latest offering as an entirely new product but a revision of the previous flagship that’s meant to provide consumers with a refined user experience and hence isn’t any different to new phone variants launched by other companies over the course of a single calendar year. Compared to the OnePlus 5, the OnePlus 5T comes with a radically different aesthetic centered around its new 18:9 display panel which features the highest resolution of any other handset from the smartphone manufacturer to date, offering 2,160 by 1,080 pixels on a 6.01-inch screen amounting to a taller aspect ratio. The minimal bezels of the device prompted the firm to move the fingerprint scanner to the back of the OnePlus 5T while simultaneously adding Face Unlock to the product in order to account for more use cases.
The dual-camera setup of the OnePlus 5T is also different to the one found on the previous device as it features another wide-angle f/1.7 lens instead of a secondary telephoto module, with this design decision being said to offer improved performance in low-lighting scenarios. Smartphones from the Chinese company traditionally have short shelf lives and are usually discontinued in favor of their successors after half a year, which is what’s currently happening with the OnePlus 5 that only launched in late June but isn’t being manufactured any longer.