Meet OnePlus’ Nexus killer
OnePlus, a new smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Shenzen, China and founded by former Oppo Vice President Peter Lau has managed to shake up the premium smartphone segment by offering the One – a top of the line smartphone powered by Qualcomm’s latest chip, the Snapdragon 801 for a measly $299, or Php 13377. At that price, it’s clear that the company has Google’s Nexus line of smartphones in its sights, which interestingly enough, started the craze of hi-end, affordable flagship smartphones when it began with the Nexus One almost five years ago.
OnePlus One
- 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AC processor
- Adreno 330 GPU
- 3GB of RAM
- 16/64GB of storage, non-expandable
- 5.5-inch full HD IPS display, Corning Gorilla Glass 3, 1920 x 1080 resolution
- 13-megapixel camera (Sony Exmor IMX214 sensor), F/2.0 aperture
- 5-megapixel wide-angle front camera
- 3G, HSDPA, LTE
- Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, USB OTG, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
- Android 4.4, CyanogenMod 11S
- 3100mAh battery
The specs of the One is simply killer. Under the hood lies Qualcomm’s latest wunderchip, the Snapdragon 801, paired with 3GB of RAM and 5.5-inch full HD display. While the cheapest model boasts only 16GB of storage, adding just $50 more nets you the 64GB version which translates to around Php 15614. With all that, you still get a design that’s on par with most flagship smartphones, including Oppo’s own Find 7. It’s not surprising of course – Oppo is the company building the One, and Lau worked for the premium Chinese smartphone manufacturer before leaving in November.
Aside from all the bells and whistles that you’d expect from a flagship device, the One also comes installed with CyanogenMod 11S. People familiar with the custom ROM creator’s work will rejoice and take solace in the fact that even if they buy the 16GB version, they’ll be able to use much of that storage as CyanogenMod 11S is light on the resources and doesn’t have a lot (if any) bloatware pre-installed.
The One will initially launch in several countries in Q2 first – Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the USA. If OnePlus ever sets up shop here (and they totally should, even if it’s just a small office somewhere) we’re sure many, many, many people will be buying the One. Heck, even if local online gadget sellers here (we’re looking at you KimStore and Widget City) manages to get their hands on this, we’re sure that it’ll promptly go out of stock the minute they start selling it.