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OnePlus 6 officially confirmed to carry a glass build as CEO talks about the flagship’s design

In traditional OnePlus fashion, we’ve been getting a lot of official teasers and details about the upcoming OnePlus 6 well ahead of its debut. Today, OnePlus has confirmed what the phone will be made of, as well as giving us a peek behind the curtain into how the company designed its latest flagship.

A blog post from Pete Lao, OnePlus’ CEO, gives us some insight into how the OnePlus 6 was designed. Before that, however, this post gives us our first official look at the phone’s design. Clearly, we’re getting a metal/glass device, just like we’ve seen from a lot of other OEMs in the past few months.

OnePlus details in the blog post that it is using a 5-layer nanotech coating under the glass to give a “stronger impression of depth.” Pete Lau points out that this is an industry first, as most only use 3 nanotech layers with this sort of design.

The post goes on to point out that the OnePlus 6 will keep the same “horizon line and characteristic curve” as we’ve seen in other OnePlus devices. It also talks about how the glass design offers a more premium feeling, and that the material conveys a “transparent, bright, and pure” feeling in the hand.

OnePlus 6’s glass design is centered around creating a “sense of value” and “premium hand-feel.” As I mentioned at the beginning, people relate deeply to the products they use. We gave a lot of thought to how users should feel when they use the OnePlus 6. The advantages of glass over metal are manifold: glass communicates a transparent, bright, and pure feeling. The way glass transforms under different lighting is a particularly important challenge—the OnePlus design team tested over 70 glass prototypes before selecting the best one.

At the same time, we always want to create devices that feel premium to the touch. We care about the user’s experience from the moment they touch the device. We also want our devices to feel burdenless in the hand, even after an extended period of use. OnePlus users have exacting standards for great industrial design. These standards often push and challenge us to meet our users’ expectations, to commit an extra layer of detail and polish in everything we do. As an example, the OnePlus 6’s glass back contains five printed layers of Nanotech Coating, a first in the smartphone industry. We applied 5 layers of Nanotech Coating instead of 3, even though the degree of separation between each layer is extremely subtle and tough to discern. However, the additional layers give the back of the device a stronger impression of depth that our most demanding users will surely appreciate. Closely examine the OnePlus 6 and you’ll indeed see this subtle nuance embedded in each device.

OnePlus is expected to officially unveil the OnePlus 6 sometime in the next few weeks. As previously confirmed, the device will be offering a Snapdragon 845 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of storage. Many details are still unclear, but OnePlus will probably reveal a fair bit more before the device actually goes on sale…


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