The OnePlus 6 will be the first smartphone from the Chinese electronics maker to feature some sort of water resistance, the company revealed earlier today as part of a Twitter teaser asking “don’t you just hate it when you have to stop using your phone when it rains?” The wording of the rhetorical question is indicative of elements resistance in the ballpark of the IP65 certificate, meaning consumers likely still shouldn’t expect a device rated for being capable of surviving water submersion, though any meaningful IP rating would still be an improvement over previous handsets from the manufacturer.
The OnePlus 6 is also set to push the boundaries of the series in terms of storage space, with OnePlus recently confirming the most premium variant of its next Android flagship will feature 256GB of internal flash memory, even though the handset itself is still likely to lack a microSD card slot. The lineup will consist of two or three devices in total, with the base model still being expected to debut with 64GB of internal storage. The smartphone will also feature a display notch, a polarizing design characteristic that OnePlus said it opted for in order to maximize the screen real estate made available to its customers without increasing the physical footprint of the OnePlus 5T. As a result, the OnePlus 6 will have a screen-to-body ratio of approximately 90-percent and users who dislike the notch will be able to black it out with a dedicated software setting, the company said. The handset will also allow for iPhone X-like navigation gestures that OnePlus is currently beta-testing and will ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 chip, as per the OEM’s previous disclosures.
The OnePlus 5T is already out of stock in most parts of the world and with the company now teasing its successor on a daily basis, the official launch of its next-generation offering is likely to follow in the coming weeks. Recent rumors suggested the OnePlus 6 will be released in China on May 5 and given the firm’s previously employed product practices, that date would likely see the high-end phablet be introduced on a global level in late April.