The OnePlus 5, while being one of the most well-rounded smartphones in the market currently, is deemed quite forgettable considering its comparison towards the more established flagships out there. For a budget smartphone, the OnePlus 5 offers the best specifications at the $500 mark. And while OnePlus has taken the back-seat now in the smartphone race, the company is looking to make a bigger splash earlier on next year.
OnePlus 5
According to reports, OnePlus initially had plans to launch a OnePlus 5T smartphone this year, to serve the same purpose as the OnePlus 3T did. The company will instead be launching the OnePlus 6 early next year. This could most likely be the case, as the OnePlus 3T ran on an improved version of the Snapdragon 820 processor, which was featured on the OnePlus 3, but this time around, there will not be any minor bump from the Snapdragon 835 this year, so OnePlus does not have a reason to launch a 5T variant of its smartphone. It was earlier speculated that Qualcomm will release the Snapdragon 836 later this year and will feature on the new Google Pixel phones, but that rumor was squashed by Qualcomm already.
It has been rumored that the phone will finally feature a QHD display and ditch the generic 1080p screens that it has been making over the years. There is also the possibility of the phone featuring a taller 18:9 aspect ratio screen with zero bezels. Because of this, the fingerprint scanner may also now shift to the back of the phone for better accessibility. The phone will also have to lose its Home button because of it. Speculations also are ripe that the phone will most likely feature the Snapdragon 845 with two variants – one with 6GB of RAM and the other with 8GB of RAM, with the smaller capacity variant to feature 64GB of internal storage and the higher capacity model to feature 128GB of RAM.
We can expect the OnePlus 6 to result in the discontinuation of the OnePlus 5 as the company is still operating on small profit margins to build a line-up of continuously available devices, considering the competitive prices that its devices are sold under.
OnePlus’s designs so far have not been radical enough to cause a dent in the smartphone space, as the OnePlus 5 was considered to be outdated in design and a copy of the iPhone 7 Plus. Hopefully OnePlus will try to adopt a more original design concept for its new 2018 flagship.