OnePlus News Daily Dose #48: OnePlus 7 Pro hands-on leak, model names, release date and more!

Before starting today’s daily dose, let me ask you guys a question – before falling in love with OnePlus, which phone was your daily driver? What brand did you prefer before the rise of this Shenzhen based OEM?

For me, it was Sony Ericsson. I tried real hard to grab the Xperia Pro, but the had to stick with Xperia Neo V due to long unavailability of the former. Once they announced the OnePlus One, I knew that this was the one! You know, the bond was automagically created. ?

Well, Sony is not a big name anymore among smartphone maker, but Samsung is. In fact, the South Korean tech giant is one of the largest Android OEMs in the world, as per IDC reports.

However, a huge chunk of users soon lose the attraction and prefer to shift to other brands from Samsung. According to a new study from CounterPoint Research, 37% of the OnePlus 6T owners switched from Samsung phones.

Interestingly, Apple is holding the second position. 16% OnePlus 6T users used to carry iPhones, which is rather significant amount of transitions after the T-Mobile-OnePlus deal in the USA.

Undoubtedly, the OnePlus 6T created a solid foundation for the Chinese smartphone maker to expand their business further, and dive into bleeding edge tech like 5G. While preparing for the arrival of the next OnePlus device, 6T is getting numerous deals and price cuts.

As a matter of fact, Amazon India is going to give upto ₹4,000 flat discount on the regular OnePlus 6T on and from tomorrow (April 11) – more precisely, today midnight till April 13.

The deal is part of the Fab Phones Fest, via which consumers can get their hands on the 8 GB RAM variant of OnePlus 6T for ₹37,999 (128 GB storage)/₹41,999 (256 GB storage) instead of regular ₹41,999/₹45,999 price tag.

The discount on the base 6 GB/128 GB model is slightly less (₹3,000). Moreover, HDFC credit or debit card holders can save an additional ₹1,500 on top of the offer price.

You know the drill…. these discount tactics are nothing but inventory cleaning.

Talking about the next OnePlus phone, readers may remember that last month the NashvilleChatterClass guys spotted a mysterious OnePlus device from Bluetooth SIG listing.

We speculated from the software version (9.5.1.GM31CB) that it could be an indicator of the upcoming OxygenOS 9.5 branch. Believe it or not, more evidences have been surfaced on the matter.

The alleged leak of OnePlus 7 ‘Pro’ came from a Weibo user. The phone (model number GM1915) in the picture is running Android 9 with build number 9.5.1 GM31CB. The mini-image in the About phone section looks like OnePlus 6T though, which could be the residue of pre-release software.

The image also tells us that the purported Pro model of OnePlus 7 comes with a 6.67″ Super Optic display, Snapdragon 855 SoC paired with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. The cameras have 48 MP, 16 MP, and 8 MP sensors.

The second image is showing us the Samsung-esque curved screen design.

Leakster Ishan Agarwal has gone one step further, and revealed the tentative model names of the upcoming OnePlus 7 variants. And yes, the GM1915 is one of them.

In a nutshell:

• OnePlus 7: GM1901, 03, 05
• OnePlus 7 Pro: GM1911, 13, 15, 17
• OnePlus 7 Pro 5G: GM1920

This is indeed a departure from the usual ‘A’ moniker (for example, ‘A6010/A6013’ belongs to OnePlus 6T). Moreover, OnePlus is allegedly going to launch multiple county and/or carrier specific models.

Ishan has also confirmed the release timeframe in May, although exact date is not known yet. The marketing tagline should be “Go Beyond Speed” (subject to change).

On the other hand, the voting session for the 5G Apps of Tomorrow event becomes live.

After many late nights (and many more cups of coffee), our panel of tech experts has finally chosen the top 20. Congratulations to our finalists, who have all been awarded an amazing OnePlus 6T for their hard work and creativity!

All you need to do is visit this page and cast your vote. The voting window is open until 00:00 EDT on Apr 19, 2019.

The community also posted the second part of the OnePlus Investigates series. In case you forget, the idea behind this series is to bring interesting questions and answers from the community members:

Ask us the hardest smartphone industry related question you can think of (or an interesting one that you’re too lazy to google). We’ll pick 3-4 to answer in the following post.

In the second part, we have already got Q/A like the following:

Q: Why are smartphones more powerful than laptops these days?

A: I think this is a misunderstanding. Smartphones are just more optimized for certain processes and tend to do less multitasking than a laptop. They are designed for certain uses. The full functionality of some professional video editing programs are not possible to utilize on your phone for instance, due to input and processing limitations.

To know more as well as participate, visit the official thread. There are free goodies waiting for you!

Ask us the hardest/most interesting smartphone industry related question you can think of —> If your question is chosen, we’ll send you a $20 USD voucher!

Give a better answer to a question than what we’ve found —> We’ll send you a OnePlus Backpack.

Let’s finish it up for today, shall we?

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