OnePlus launches the 6, its third flagship phone in 11 months, in Mumbai

Chinese smartphone major OnePlus launched its much-anticipated flagship device, OnePlus 6, in Mumbai on Thursday. Actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aditi Rao Hydari unveiled the phone – which will be available in three size and speed variants – to an invite-only audience at the National Sports Club of India. The phone will go on sale on May 21 on Amazon India to its Prime subscribers, and a day later to everyone else. A special variant, called the Marvel Avengers Limited Edition, will go on sale at the end of the month.

Interestingly, this is the third flagship phone launch by OnePlus (a Shenzhen-based $1.4 billion manufacturer) in just over 10 months, and even though it is priced much lower than its premium smartphones, it will be competing head-to-head with Apple iPhone 8, 8-Plus, and X; Google Pixel 2 and Google Pixel 2 XL; and Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. The variants include 64 GB (with 6GB RAM, ₹34,999), 128 GB (8 GB RAM, ₹39,999) and Marvel Limited Edition with 256 GB storage (8 GB RAM, ₹44,999).

The OnePlus 5 was released in June 2017, while the OnePlus 5T was launched in November that year. Though the 5 and 5T versions remained more or less the same in terms of design and hardware specifications, there are significant changes in both for the 6. The OnePlus 6 has a 6.28 inch screen, compared to the 6.01 inch screen of the 5T and the 5.5 inch screen of the 5. It is also marginally shorter by 4 mm, but the engineers at OnePlus have managed to pack in a bigger screen in a smaller body, thanks to a bezel-less design. The 6 will have a 19:9 aspect ratio as compared to the 18:9 ratio in the 5T.

Another manufacturing design change is the use of glass instead of metal on both the front and the back. According to Szymon Kopec, product manager, OnePlus, “Glass is better at transmitting radio waves, so signals should be stronger on the OnePlus 6 for LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication.”

In an interview to the Hindustan Times prior to the launch, Kyle Kiang, the San Francisco-based global marketing head of OnePlus, said, “We do not introduce features only because they are trends or are cool to talk about. If a particular feature does not improve the user experience, we let it be.” For instance, the OnePlus 6 still has headphone jacks and wired charging, something that its user base had asked for. “We are looking at making the product comfortable to use, and we might introduce some features only when we think the time is right.”

Vikas Agarwal, country head for OnePlus, told HT, “India contributes close to one-third of the company’s global revenue, and “is easily the largest market in terms of number of units sold.”

“With the OnePlus 6, we challenged ourselves to deliver an external design as smooth and elegant as the work we’ve done inside the device,” said OnePlus Founder and CEO Pete Lau. “We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we hope our users are too.”

The camera and the processor in the OnePlus have also undergone an upgrade. Kiang said, “We are now on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 platform, and the camera, too, has been enhanced. The main camera is 16 megapixels while the secondary camera has 20 megapixels, and will come with optical image stabilisation.”

What the OnePlus 6 has in store

Variants

64 GB: 6 GB RAM, Price ₹34,999

128 GB: 8 GB RAM, Price ₹39,999

256 GB Marvel Avengers Limited Edition: 8 GB RAM, Price ₹44,999

Colours

Midnight Black, Mirror Black, Silk White

Operating System

Oxygen OS based on Android Oreo 8.1

CPU

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (Octa-core, up to 2.8 GHz)

Battery

3300 mAh, with Dash Charge

Resolution

2280 x 1080 pixels, Optic AMOLED display

Camera Features

Portrait Mode on both rear and front camera, Pro Mode, Panorama, HDR, Dynamic Denoise, Clear Image, and RAW