Today, OnePlus finally announced the OnePlus 2. If you didn’t watch the first ever virtual reality product launch, well, here’s a recap.
Funny story though. OnePlus has been leaking specs of the OnePlus 2 for the last month or so. As far as I can recall, they officially announced that it would be $449. The only problem with that is that at the end of the launch, they made jokes about how much it would cost and then cut the lights before they said the price. Are they trying to leave something to the imagination? Who knows?
Anyway, it would appear that the OnePlus 2 is going to be a pretty amazing device. Co-founder Carl Pei said that they have heard the OnePlus’s community’s criticisms and they where them like a badge of honor, vowing to never settle and never stop pushing the boundaries of innovation.
Most of what we heard are things we already knew. The OnePlus One will use a Snapdragon 810 processor, 4 GB of DDR4 RAM, and more.
At some point, I stopped following the leaks from the OnePlus team, so most of the rest was new to me. I was impressed with the fact that they stuck with a 5.5″ 1080p IPS LCD. I was afraid they would go for 1440p, which seems to be the trend in companies that shoot for big time specs.
There’s also a 3300 mAh battery, which is, you know, great, but there’s more exciting stuff!
We knew that the OnePlus 2 would use USB C; however, we didn’t know that OnePlus patented a reversible USB cable, so you have an adapter there that is reversible. Pretty cool.
Another thing I thought was pretty cool was a feature that they borrowed from the iPhone. It’s a hardware switch to turn off notifications, except it’s Android, so it’s a three part switch, including none, priority, and all.
Then there’s the fingerprint, which the world is going to test. They’re claiming that the fingerprint reader is faster than the iPhone’s TouchID. That will be interesting to see. Makes you wonder where that story came from that said Google wanted to use a fingerprint reader on the Nexus 6 but couldn’t because of Apple’s patents.
There’s another feature that OnePlus borrowed from Windows Phone, which was a light and dark theme, allowing users to choose between different colors for their theme.
The camera looks to be a big improvement as well. They’ve redesigned the Camera app, which should be exciting, adding a 50 MP mode; however, they didn’t say if this version of OxygenOS that will ship on the OnePlus 2 will be offered for OxygenOS on the OnePlus One.
They also promised four StyleSwap covers; however, the big story there is how much easier they’ll be to change. I’ve broken StyleSwap covers trying to change it on my OnePlus One, so that’s a welcome change.
Finally, the OnePlus 2 will begin selling on August 11 in the U.S., Canada, the EU, and China. It will come to Southeast Asia in Q4. You do need an invite to get one, but should be easier than this time last year.
Personally, I think they’ve done a great job with the OnePlus 2 and I’m pretty excited about it. It looks like they’ve really done a great job of learning from their mistakes.
They say it’s the phone of the future. It’s not a 2015 flagship. It’s the 2016 flagship killer.
