OnePlus

After months upon months of rumors and speculation, OnePlus finally announced its highly anticipated OnePlus 2 smartphone this evening. While nearly everything was already known about the device, it’s nice to get confirmation and some rehashing of details from OnePlus. As expected, the OnePlus 2 features a 5.5-inch display at 1080p and a refreshed design. The company brags that it’s not a 2015 flagship, but rather a 2016 flagship. The device will be available August 11th in the US, Canada, India, EU, and China. It will rollout to Southeast Asia in Q4.

OnePlus 2 launch event VR viewing app now live on the Google Play Store

Cam Bunton Jul 25 2015 - 7:43 am PT

Update: OnePlus has also launched its invite page, where you can add your email address to the reservation list. Head on over to OnePlus’ site and read more about this year’s invite system.

OnePlus has been teasing us for weeks, or even months, about 2016’s “flagship killer”. The OnePlus Two is going to be announced at an event on Monday, July 27 from 7PM Pacific Time, and will be the first smartphone announcement to use Google Cardboard VR to enhance the experience. OnePlus has been sending out its own Cardboard units to fans and members of the press, and now the viewing app has finally hit the Google Play Store.

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei has no degree, lives in AirBnB homes and “wants to change the world”

Cam Bunton Jul 23 2015 - 2:28 am PT

There’s no getting away from OnePlus‘ effect on the market. From the very beginning it planned to be disruptive and offer consumers what they really wanted: A flagship phone at a low price. Despite controversies and frustrations over its marketing and invite-based purchases, OnePlus has gone on to sell over 1.3 million units of its first smartphone. That may not seem like much in a market where companies sell millions of phones. But this is just one phone, made by one small company that most consumers still haven’t heard of.

OnePlus 2 revealed in TENAA images, shows physical “home” button and more

Cam Bunton Jul 22 2015 - 4:37 am PT

The OnePlus 2 looks to have been outed by the Chinese certification body, TENAA. These images appear to show front, back and side profiles of the next-generation OnePlus smartphone, which looks like it’ll include a physical home button similar to the Samsung Galaxy S6 – presumably where the built-in fingerprint sensor will be housed …
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OnePlus 2 will get a “new and improved” invite system with reservation list

Cam Bunton Jul 16 2015 - 1:10 am PT

OnePlus sparked conversation, controversy and frustration last year when its sought-after debut smartphone launched. Its invite system meant you could only get hold of a OnePlus One if you received an invitation to buy one. With the OnePlus 2 — due to be announced in 11 days — the company will still have an invite system in place, but promises that it is “new and improved”.

The more-efficient Snapdragon 810 v2.1 is already shipping aboard the HTC One M9

Stephen Hall Jul 15 2015 - 1:51 pm PT

OnePlus came out not long ago to say that the upcoming OnePlus 2 will sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor. This obviously caused a bit of concern in the community considering the system-on-a-chip’s mixed history with heat problems, but the company reassured us that it was going with some kind of updated “version 2.1” of the chip that didn’t have as many problems — and they said they were optimizing it themselves, too.

The company touted this as some kind of selling point for the device over the year’s other Snapdragon 810 handsets, most notably the HTC One M9 and the LG G Flex 2. AnandTech even tested the v2.1 chip to make sure that the company’s claims were legitimate, and it turned out they were. But what the company didn’t say was that v2.1 is already (today!) being built into other handsets. And that includes the HTC One M9…
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MKBHD shares first photo taken with OnePlus 2 main camera [Update – Now with Video]

Cam Bunton Jul 14 2015 - 8:17 am PT

Marques Brownlee, better known as YouTube personality MKBHD, uploaded what we believe is the first public photograph taken with the OnePlus 2. OnePlus hasn’t been shy about leaking features and specs from its next “flagship killer”. And while we know it’s going to feature a USB Type-C port, a fingerprint sensor, 3,300mAh battery and 4GB RAM, we haven’t heard any specifics from OnePlus officially on the display or camera resolution.
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OnePlus 2 will be smaller than OnePlus One, have larger 3,300 mAh battery

Stephen Hall Jul 9 2015 - 10:19 am PT

OnePlus One with a OnePlus 2 underneath

OnePlus held an AMA on Reddit this morning, and actually used the opportunity to give us some more details about the upcoming handset. According to various OnePlus team members (who did indeed verify themselves), the phone will have a slightly larger 3,300 mAh battery (up from 3,100 mAh of the OnePlus One), while the physical size of the phone will actually be moderately smaller than that of its predecessor…
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Upcoming OnePlus 2 set to have 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM

Stephen Hall Jul 7 2015 - 10:07 am PT

Continuing its obnoxious parade of announcing the OnePlus 2 specs one at a time, the “Never Settle” company has come out today to announce that the OnePlus 2 is going to have 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM.
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OnePlus’ Google Cardboard viewer is now available for $0 + shipping

Stephen Hall Jul 3 2015 - 6:56 am PT

One of the biggest reasons of going with cardboard for Google Cardboard was to get these viewers into the hands of as many people as possible. But while many vendors are selling their Cardboard viewers for around $20 (and up), OnePlus has decided to sell its new viewer—which will help you watch the VR launch of the company’s next handset—for just $0 plus shipping. And it’s available now.

OnePlus 2 variants appear on Bluetooth SIG website as benchmark results suggest 4GB of RAM

Chance Miller Jul 2 2015 - 7:26 am PT

A pair of interesting developments concerning the upcoming OnePlus 2 smartphone have emerged recently. First off, three variants of the device have been spotted on the Bluetooth SIG website. The variants all have been certified with hardware build 2.2 and software build 2.01 for Bluetooth 4.1.

OnePlus giving away Cardboard headsets to 1,000 lucky individuals

Tom Maxwell Jul 1 2015 - 8:56 am PT

OnePlus is a small, exciting Android OEM (original equipment manufacturer) doing practically everything different. Just a few days ago they announced that the OnePlus 2, the next generation of the OnePlus One, will be unveiled on July 27th in a live-stream conducted using 360-degree virtual reality cameras. And to make sure as many people as possible can watch, they’re now giving away 1,000 of their own in-house Cardboard (the Google specification for how to build a cheap VR headset) headsets to lucky fans.
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Purported OnePlus 2 w/ metal build leaks, looks like rumored 3rd gen. Motorola phones

Stephen Hall Jun 29 2015 - 6:20 am PT

The OnePlus 2 isn’t scheduled to be unveiled for about a month, but PhoneArena has apparently come into some nice new shots of both the back and front of the device. They’re a little bit blurry — what leak isn’t? — but they do give us a relatively clear look at the overall build of the phone and an early peek at its software as well…
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OnePlus to launch OnePlus 2 via virtual reality, announces its own Google Cardboard viewer

Stephen Hall Jun 25 2015 - 11:17 am PT

The company’s OnePlus One

OnePlus has today announced that they plan to launch their upcoming OnePlus 2 handset by way of virtual reality, something that has never been done before. Tired of traditional keynote-and-an-audience tech announcements, OnePlus decided to do something new — and, perhaps more importantly, way cheaper:

In our industry, product launches tend to be the same. An auditorium, a keynote, and a seated audience. For the OnePlus 2 launch, we didn’t want that barrier between us and you; we want to invite you into our world, because you’re a major part of it. That is why we will be unveiling the OnePlus 2 to the world completely in VR.

OnePlus has a reputation of being as loud and disruptive as they can in their marketing, and this is yet another step in that direction as the company slowly announces the specifications of the OnePlus 2 one by one…
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OnePlus defends its marketing strategy, says it just wants to build community with fans

Stephen Hall Jun 24 2015 - 9:15 am PT

Following the announcement that the OnePlus 2 would have a USB Type-C port, Mobile Syrup wrote an open letter on Monday to OnePlus calling for sanity. Most who have watched OnePlus evolve as a company agreed wholeheartedly with this letter. From teasing a “game changer” that ended up being a miniature drone barely made available, to teasing the end of the OnePlus One invite system several months after the phone finally hit the market, the company has been known to be really loud (and many times obnoxious) about nothing. But OnePlus says that there’s a reason for all of this…
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OnePlus announces that the OnePlus 2 will feature a USB Type-C port (Updated)

Stephen Hall Jun 22 2015 - 11:13 am PT

Update: Images of the company’s USB-C cable have now been leaked online by the company itself…

Here comes the next little detail about the OnePlus 2. According to a tweet this afternoon from OnePlus, the company’s upcoming OnePlus 2 flagship phone will be one of the first — if not the first — to sport a USB Type-C port.
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OnePlus releases OxygenOS 1.01 for One owners with touch screen issues

Stephen Hall Jun 19 2015 - 7:29 am PT

Many OnePlus One owners have been settling lately, and it looks like OnePlus — after many attempts — is still trying to finally put the phone’s touch screen issues to rest. A new build of Cyanogen OS was pushed just a couple of days ago to fix issues for those on that OS, but now OnePlus is pushing out an update to its OxygenOS as well, bumping it to version 1.01.

The announcement post, sadly, doesn’t have a full change log. It only mentions this one touch screen fix that many OnePlus One owners have been waiting for. You can head over to the OnePlus forums to grab the firmware. The company did, however, mention a new tool that lets those on Cyanogen OS easily flash a build of OxygenOS without losing your data:

In addition, our friends over at Fastboot Mobile and XDA actually worked on a migration tool that will allow those of you who haven’t tried OxygenOS yet to easily flash from CM 11 or 12 without losing your data. The tool is in beta but we thought it was pretty cool so why not share it and let you play with it.

Proceed with caution and follow the instructions carefully. It’s beta so it’s not guaranteed to work 100%.

Prerequisite:

.Net 4.5 download – https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/Download/details.aspx?id=30653

You must be running this on a locally installed version of Windows 7 or Windows 8

Tool download:
http://eu-oxygen.cust.fastbootmobile.com/OnePlusOneMigration-logging-Beta1.zip

Steps:

Unzip the above into its own folder

Copy the flashable OxygenOS zip and MD5 into the “download” folder contained in the above

On the device go to Settings > Developer options and uncheck Update CM Recovery (CM has this checked as default which causes issues)

Make sure the device is plugged into the computer

Run the “OnePlusOneMigration.exe” file as Administrator

Accept any prompts to confirm the drivers – they are ours and are signed

Follow the prompts (as prompted) and you should end up with OxygenOS installed. The ADB sideload process can take awhile to finish.

If you found moving to OxygenOS daunting before, this might be your opportunity to try out OnePlus’ almost-stock OS.

OnePlus: 2 will cost more than $322, run at 1.8GHz for cooler temperatures

Tom Maxwell Jun 18 2015 - 8:36 am PT

The onslaught of OnePlus posts teasing out each individual facts about its upcoming phone, the OnePlus 2, continues. Today the company is responding to more concerns about overheating, as well as about the price of the OnePlus 2.

Some of the most nagging OnePlus One bugs supposedly fixed in Cyanogen OS update

Stephen Hall Jun 17 2015 - 10:05 pm PT

The OnePlus One, despite its well-deserved praise and renown, has some shortcoming. Besides the fact that OnePlus has some of the most ridiculous — although effective — marketing of any tech company today, the flagship phone itself has been plagued with some pretty nagging problems . Most notably, OnePlus has some pretty sketchy Bluetooth connectivity with in-car systems, problems sending MMS on some carriers, and — most notoriously — problems with touch screen sensitivity. Now, though, it looks like these problems are finally fixed…
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OnePlus announces OnePlus 2 will use improved version of Snapdragon 810

Tom Maxwell Jun 17 2015 - 12:07 pm PT

In a post to its community forums, OnePlus today unveiled which CPU its much-anticipated OnePlus 2 will use – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810. The company said that the Snapdragon 810’s unmatched speed and ability to multitask while maintaining battery performance had them coming back to it over and over again during their search for the right processor. But don’t worry, the company says it will be version 2.1 of the chipset, a version that they collaborated on with Qualcomm engineers to integrate and fine-tune for the OnePlus 2’s hardware and software, and that (apparently) won’t overheat.

Cyanogen OS 12.1 coming to OnePlus One soon, but OxygenOS w/ Android 5.1 will have to wait for OnePlus 2

Stephen Hall Jun 9 2015 - 10:46 am PT

Cyanogen, along with announcing a couple of contests aimed at finding 3 people to give exclusive early access to the OnePlus 2, has this morning taken to its forum to give us an update on the current state of software for the OnePlus One and the OnePlus 2. The company says that Cyanogen OS 12.1, updated with Android 5.1 Lollipop is on the way and should arrive soon:

CM12.1, updated to 5.1, is on its way. We have a preview build that’s undergoing factory testing and google certification. You will have it soon.

Sadly, though, if you were hoping for the Android 5.1 updated version of OxygenOS, it looks like you’re going to have to wait for the OnePlus 2. It will be coming to the OnePlus One, however—just after it comes to the OnePlus 2 later this fall. A new build of OxygenOS will be landing soon with touchscreen fixes (also included in the above COS release).

…we won’t have an OTA for the community build of OxygenOS we released back in April for the OnePlus One until after the OnePlus 2 release. We will put up a new build very soon with the touchscreen fix for those of you who are experiencing this problem but we won’t have an official update until we have the resources to do a proper job.

While the company has been talking about the OnePlus 2 a lot this week, we still don’t really know anything about the upcoming handset. That said, the two contests that OnePlus announced today suggest that we might be hearing about the phone sooner than expected, so be sure to keep an ear out for the announcement—with OnePlus, we know it’s going to be teased (a lot).

OnePlus contests will decide which three people will get to see the OnePlus 2 first

Tom Maxwell Jun 9 2015 - 9:52 am PT

We’ve heard very little about the much-anticipated OnePlus 2 since September of last year when OnePlus confirmed it was working on the device and targeting a Q2 or Q3 2015 launch. We expected the company to unveil it late last month when they tweeted a plan to “shake up the industry” on June 1st, but that turned out to be teasing flash sales and a consequential permanent price drop of the OnePlus One. Today, however, OnePlus is actually teasing the OnePlus 2 in the form of two contests.
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OnePlus One price permanently dropped to $249, or $349 with Dropbox Pro subscription for limited time

Tom Maxwell Jun 8 2015 - 8:47 am PT

OnePlus has sold only somewhere over a million units of its OnePlus One (very small compared to the big OEMs), and went as far as to call its recent flash sales of the phone as something that would “shake up the industry,” but the company isn’t stopping there. Based on taking a “hard look at the numbers to make sure we were maintaining our commitment to our users,” OnePlus has decided to make the $249 starting price of the One permanent (sorry to everyone who waiting anxiously at their computers to get the deal last week). It also has a new partner in another promotion…

Starting June 10th – and for a limited time, they say – the company will be offering the 64GB OnePlus One with a 1-year subscription to Dropbox Pro, the cloud storage service, for $349. The deal is valid in the US, EU, and Canada. We wouldn’t be too surprised to see this deal lasts longer, though, as Dropbox continues its ugly battle against Google, Microsoft, and others to be the future storage center of people’s millions of files as they move from device to device.

While the OnePlus One is a solid buy for anyone in the market for a gimmick-free, what-you-see-is-what-you-get Android phone sold at cost, we still expect to see a OnePlus 2 soon, with the last word from OnePlus that it would go on sale “sometime in 2015.” Bloomberg pegged the August through September timeframe as when we should see it, and we recently reported on seeing a mysterious device from OnePlus show up in Geekbench test results. Just something to keep in mind.

OnePlus One drops to $249 this week with flash sales

Tom Maxwell Jun 1 2015 - 8:25 am PT