OnePlus officially announced its OnePlus 6 yesterday, but a good portion of the press event was directed at highlighting the company’s prior successes. Co-founder Carl Pei, for example, stressed how important word of mouth marketing is in continuing to grow the already large loyal fanbase of the company. Beyond that, Pei also directed attention at the high rate at which its OnePlus 5 sold, peaking out at around 7,000 units per minute. The handset was also Finish telecom Elisa’s top-selling smartphone over the past 17 months, as of the OnePlus 6 launch event. That’s in spite of the fact that the company’s follow-up, the OnePlus 5T, actually outperformed its predecessor. No figures were given alongside that claim but it seems to indicate that OnePlus is in a great position as its OnePlus 6 gets ready to officially land for users around the globe.
All of that seems to bode well for the company, especially with consideration for recent hiccups in the overall market. Sustained growth throughout a trend in the market which shows a slow-down is nearly always a good thing. However, past sales and a hugely loyal following don’t necessarily equate to great things in store with the OnePlus 6. The company’s latest device may be a big progression over the prior variants and even costs a few dollars more as a result, but it isn’t perfect. In fact, no smartphone is and each has its own quirks. One sticking point for users with the new OnePlus flagship is almost certainly going to be the LG-style inclusion of a notch and software hiding mechanism for getting rid of it. It also utilizes the same display panel as the OnePlus 5, albeit at the now more common shift toward a taller ratio – set at 19:9 for the handset in question.
That’s not to say that users aren’t going to be happy with the substantial upgrades OnePlus has included. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 SoC is a prominent part of the package, featuring four cores clocked at 2.8GHz and four more at 1.7GHz. That’s backed up by either 8GB of RAM with either 128GB or 256 GB of storage or 6GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, depending on the device variant. Optical image stabilization has been added to the rear dual 16-megapixel camera, while Portrait mode has been added to the forward facing 16-megapixel selfie camera. The software behind those has been improved as well, including a new slow-motion capture at HD and 480 frames per second. Not least of all, the software will also be updated to Android P at some point. Bearing all of that in mind, it remains to be seen whether or not OnePlus can maintain its past momentum moving forward. The device won’t hit shelves until later this month, so it is still a bit too early to pass judgment.