OnePlus confirms its next radical smartphone

Earlier on this year, OnePlus announced not one but three new handsets, the OnePlus 7, the OnePlus 7 Pro and the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. Recently news started spreading about the launch of the next wave of OnePlus handsets and OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has weighed in on this topic by revealing that at least one new smartphone will be announced before the end of this calendar year.

This upcoming OnePlus handset that’s been dubbed the OnePlus 7T Pro will be a 5G variant of the standard OnePlus 7T. As per an interview by the Financial Times that’s picked up by XDA-developers, “OnePlus CEO Pete Lau confirmed his company is preparing to manufacture a second 5G phone before the end of 2019, this time being 5G-capable globally… This device should pick up the mantle from its predecessor OnePlus 7 Pro, the company’s first 5G-capable phone.”

Lau has also taken some potshots at Apple by claiming that he believes that any smartphone that wants to be considered a flagship in 2019 needs to have 5G included and be capable of connecting to more 5G networks as they are introduced across the world.

Historically, OnePlus has two release windows in a year. In the first half of the year, there is the vanilla number release that takes place in May and these handsets set the trend for the rest of the year. There is also a follow-up T release in October that comes with the latest specifications.

Forbes states, “This is coupled with a short production runs of each device to fulfil the demand over six months. Users buying a new OnePlus device can expect a device that is at best six months behind the technology cute, but which is promised two years of software updates and three years of security updates - with many of the key software benefits back ported to older devices.”