OnePlus is making its presence felt in the premium smartphone market and has clarified that it will channel its focus into just one "true flagship" line from now on. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau confirmed this during the OnePlus 3 launch event in Shenzhen on Wednesday, and said the OnePlus X series will no longer be continued, Engadget reported.
This means OnePlus will no longer be fighting the low-end price war, something which has attracted the attention of several OEMs from around the world. OnePlus X was a fairly well-designed and well-equipped smartphone, but it failed to generate the interest its higher-end siblings did in the market.
While the company's decision against budget phones is firm, Lau said OnePlus will invest more into after-sales services and into lifestyle products such as the series of bags that were launched at the show to promote the brand. However, Lau said OnePlus will not adopt the conventional advertising channels, so it can reduce the cost of the product.
During his interview with Engadget, Lau said OnePlus is doing good business across Europe, India and the United States. After the success of two flagships, OnePlus has finally been able to let go of the loathed invite-system for its OnePlus 3 smartphone. The company had mass produced the handset well in advance to avoid the crunch after the launch.
OnePlus 3 brings a fresh feel into the premium smartphone market with competitive pricing and specifications. The design of the handset is new and at the same time has some resemblance to the first OnePlus One smartphone. In India, the handset has been launched for Rs. 27,999, and has so far received nothing but praise from critics.
In terms of specifications, OnePlus 3 features a 5.5-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4, a 16MP primary camera with f/2.0 aperture, OIS, EIS, PDAF, 4K recording and 8MP front snapper with same aperture. It is powered by Snapdragon 820 chipset, 6GB DDR4 RAM and offers 64GB storage. There is a 3,000mAh battery that comes with Dash Charge tech for fast charging solutions.
OnePlus 3 features a full metal body and has other premium features such as fingerprint scanner, USB Type-C port, Dirac HD Sound, dual microphone with noise cancellation and dual SIM 4G LTE support. It runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based Oxygen OS out-of-the-box.