OnePlus News Daily Dose #12: 5G phone pricing, 10x lossless zoom, cloud gaming and more!

Dedicated fans and followers always want to hear something straight from the horse’s mouth. Now that MWC is at the doorstep, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has shared some of the key details of their upcoming 5G phone.

In our previous daily dose, we speculated that the device might not work on T-Mobile’s 5G network in USA. T-Mobile is currently the carrier partner of OnePlus there; the carrier exclusive OnePlus 6T is sold by them.

In an interview with USA Today, Pete has confirmed that the first 5G phone will not launch in the USA. Rather European markets will get the glory, as UK’s EE and Finland’s Elisa are confirmed to carry the phone.

As a matter of fact, the Shenzhen based OEM shared a picture of the prototype phone with USA Today. A visual teardown was not possible as it was wrapped in a protective casing.

As for config, it is now ‘semi-officially’ confirmed that the phone will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform and the Snapdragon X50 modem will handle the 5G network. As X50 does not support standalone mode, a regular LTE X24 modem will handle LTE (and lower) fallback modes.

It’s still very early days for 5G, and we want to take the opportunity to raise more awareness particularly within the OnePlus community, but not just limited to the OnePlus community, in what we can look forward to with 5G.

– Pete Lau

“Apart from that chipset, and the ability to support the 5G network, the device itself doesn’t necessarily have to have other technical differences from a 4G device,”, the CEO commented.

While the naming scheme of the 5G phone is not finalised yet, he hinted about the pricing.

There’s a definite significant cost difference (between the 5G and 4G variants) but we will definitely do our best to control (the pricing) and we’ll keep the device within $1,000.

Going above $1,000, the devices become too expensive.

OnePlus is not abandoning the US though:

The U.S. is our most important market, so a longterm 5G focus is critically important.

Qualcomm’s next gen X55 5G modem contains improvement such as TDD network support and standalone mode which are critical in designing a compact and battery friendly phone. As the 5G tech evolves, OnePlus will get back with new devices in future and launch them in USA.

Another interesting info: OnePlus will showcase the capability of the 5G network by streaming Ace Combat 7 via cloud so that users can play it directly on the phone! OnePlus Community Consultant dsmonteiro has seconded this in his MWC live report thread.

Spanish OnePlus fans, salud! Besides MWC, there will be a local live event for the community happening on February 27 at the FNAC Store in Plaza Cataluña.

Carl Pei and David S. will be there in the meetup. Users can ask questions for Carl’s Q&A on 5G and brand philosophy by putting ‘#questionforCarl’ in their posts. You can know more about the event via Facebook.

Carl has also invited Googler Hiroshi Lockheimer (SVP Platforms & Ecosystems) to test their 5G prototype phone in MWC.

https://twitter.com/getpeid/status/1099237653696913408

Meanwhile, OPPO has showcased their 10x lossless zooming tech and 5G prototype phone at a presentation ahead of Mobile World Congress.

The ‘secret’ relationship between OPPO and OnePlus is already known to us, thus I will not be surprised to see OnePlus ‘borrowing’ the 10x lossless zoom for their upcoming phones.

OnePlus CEO Pete, on the other hand, was ‘studying’ a McLaren F1 just before MWC.

Will there be more McLaren branded special editions? Uggh… I hate these cryptic hints!

Let’s change the course of discussion a bit.

FYI, the in-house OxygenOS on OnePlus phones was actually developed by ex-Paranoid Android developers. After the collaboration with Cyanogen Inc. went south, OnePlus hired a huge chunk of PA devs to craft their own OS from scratch.

Back in the days, Paranoid Android was one of the most famous and eminent custom ROM. The team went through some rough patches, but they did a fantastic comeback in recent years.

From unique UX to eye-pleasing aesthetics, Paranoid Android (AOSPA) is always admired by the modding community.

Back in January, the team announced Android 9 Pie based builds for various phones, with the notable exception of OnePlus device specific builds. Interestingly, OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T were supported by a QSSI which is a chipset specific Generic System Image (GSI).

Yesterday the team revealed beta Paranoid Pie builds for OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T.

XDA Recognized Developer herna and markakash are maintaining AOSPA for the device duo. The phones share a common build due to their internal similarities.

Except from the alert slider, everything works properly. In case of OnePlus 6T, the in-display fingerprint support is absent, but a fix is coming.

Hampus Olsson, the man behind the beautiful stock OnePlus wallpapers, collaborates with AOSPA team. You can notice his signature style artworks after booting this ROM.

#stayparanoid

See you tomorrow – ciao!

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