This week, OnePlus announced a new special edition of its latest smartphone, the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition. Which is a pretty good looking phone, but it includes a few new features that were not part of the OnePlus 6T that was announced a little over a month and a half ago. That includes Warp Charge 30, which gives the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition a way to charge even faster than the OnePlus 6T was already charging. This, of course, is angering some of its fans, which are mostly made up of hardcore tech enthusiasts. OnePlus also upgraded the RAM in this McLaren Edition, bringing it to 10GB. While some are joking that it is the first upgrade to RAM since the OnePlus 3 back in 2016, others are upset that the regular OnePlus 6T doesn’t have that option.
Many OnePlus 6T buyers are upset that just over a month after the phone was announced, there is now a new phone from OnePlus that has even more cutting edge tech than the OnePlus 6T has. OnePlus’ forums are filling up with unhappy customers and it’s not a surprise at all. OnePlus says quite often when it announces the “T” variant of its smartphone every year, that it doesn’t want to wait to put new tech into a new smartphone next year, and that it should be available to the customer now. Which makes sense, no need to wait a year to put in an in-display fingerprint sensor. But this time around, people are upset, because the OnePlus 6T was announced on October 31, and this McLaren Edition was announced on December 12, about six weeks later. People that just bought the OnePlus 6T already has their phone outdated thanks to this partnership with McLaren. Some are arguing that OnePlus could have done some other exclusive features for this edition, like the paint job, some of the animations and such. But keeping Warp Charge 30 exclusive to this McLaren Edition is what is really annoying some customers.
Background: OnePlus has done special edition smartphones before, it has done a few for different Marvel films in the past few years. But typically that meant a new paint job, and that’s about it. With this new McLaren Edition model, it has done a new paint job, but also added new features. And that right there is what it is angering its user-base. Special Editions are usually used to tout new paint jobs for different events that are going on, or are announced at the same time as the regular version. For instance, Huawei likes to do Porsche Design editions of its Huawei Mate smartphones. But those are announced alongside the regular Huawei Mate smartphone, and not a month and a half later. They are also quite a bit more expensive, so many people don’t bat an eye at it. But this McLaren Edition is about $150 more than the base-model OnePlus 6T, which is something else that has a lot of people upset.
The McLaren Edition of the OnePlus 6T is a really good looking smartphone, and many people do like how it looks and are looking to pick it up – it officially went on sale today. But there are still OnePlus 6T users that are pretty upset, and it’s hard to disagree with their reasoning here. Sony fans get upset that it releases a new flagship every six months, and here OnePlus is announcing essentially a new flagship, just a month later. This will likely be chalked up as another mistake that OnePlus has made over the years. In its early days, it made plenty of mistakes and some that turned many customers off of its brand and smartphones. Though lately, it hasn’t made many mistakes, almost like it had grown up a bit. This McLaren Edition OnePlus 6T is not so much a mistake in itself, but they way it was announced was. This should have been announced alongside the OnePlus 6T back in October.
Impact: This could turn a number of fans off from buying future OnePlus products, but it likely won’t. OnePlus has made a name for itself for launching high-specced smartphones, at pretty low prices. Which is a big reason why hardcore tech enthusiasts love its products. The other main reason is the software, which is a mostly stock Android affair, with a few changes sprinkled in. OnePlus has quickly turned into one of the bigger names in Android, in fact these days when companies say that their products work with Android smartphones, they mention brands like “Samsung, LG and OnePlus” and for a company that is only about five years old, that is rather impressive to say the least. This isn’t a huge mistake for OnePlus, but it certainly could have been done better. Sure some customers might decide not to use OnePlus again, but they will likely get even more customers, offsetting that loss.
The OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition is a pretty cool looking smartphone. It is essentially the OnePlus 6T, but with a few changes. One is the paint job. It has a hint of orange around the sides towards the bottom of the phone, while the back is still black. Giving it a rather interesting color. It also brings in a bit more RAM at 10GB of RAM with 256GB of storage. There are no other variants with less RAM and Storage either here. And the feature that most seem to be upset about is Warp Charge 30. Which is able to recharge about 50-percent of your battery in just 20 minutes, and that is all done without damaging the life expectancy of the battery, which is also pretty impressive. That feature will likely be part of the OnePlus 7 next year, though it would have been awesome to see it as part of the OnePlus 6T this year, especially since it did up the battery capacity this time around. Though one thing that would have made fans happy, is if the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition had added the headphone jack back, after OnePlus took it away in the 6T to provide a larger capacity battery.