OnePlus co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Pete Lau took to Chinese social media network Weibo earlier today to reveal the first known camera samples of the OnePlus 6, the company’s next Android flagship expected to be announced in the coming weeks. The half a dozen images seen in the gallery below suggest one of the two lenses of the smartphone’s dual-camera setup will be a telephoto affair, with the device apparently being capable of delivering a natural bokeh effect that doesn’t solely rely on software blurring. The photographs themselves have all been taken in Stanford, California, on a sunny day, thus not revealing anything about the low-light capabilities of the upcoming phablet.
Mobile photography is one of the rare few segments in which previous OnePlus products were arguably lagging behind their flagship peers, with the Chinese original equipment manufacturer also having a seemingly unclear strategy on how to improve that aspect of its offerings. While the OnePlus 5 debuted with the lineup’s first dual-camera setup to date and included a telephoto lens, the OnePlus 5T ended up scrapping such a glass module in favor of a more conventional lens. The phablet still shipped with Portrait Mode support but delivered a somewhat different type of background blur due to the physical limitations of its new setup which was designed with the goal of improving its low-light performance. The newly revealed shots hence don’t guarantee the existence of a telephoto lens on the OnePlus 6 but make it more likely.
According to recent reports, the upcoming handset will feature a 20-megapixel main camera supported by a 16-megapixel sensor, whereas another 16-megapixel module is likely to be accommodated by its display notch. The OnePlus 6 will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 and come in two or three variants, with the most premium member of the series featuring 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space, OnePlus previously confirmed. The device is expected to be officially announced late this month or in early May and go on sale shortly following its debut.
