OnePlus Nord pre-orders have already begun. Here are the features it needs (and doesn't need)

A few weeks ago OnePlus teased “something new“came at the time, it was suspected that the Chinese phone manufacturer was cooking a new midrange after its release in April OnePlus 8 and 8 per. That was later confirmed on June 23 As CEO Pete Lau reported that OnePlus announced a “new, cheaper smartphone product line”. At the time, the project was called “OnePlus Z ‘Thing'”, but the official name of the new device appears to be OnePlus Nord. Although prices and specifications are not known, Lau said in a video promoting the North that the phone will be “under $ 500”. And although almost no information has been released on the phone, pre-orders have already started. The phone will be available in India and Europe, but not to North America.

Only once has OnePlus launched a cheaper phone that was separate from its flagship, and restarting this would be remarkable for the company. The OnePlus X was first introduced in 2015 and was a beautifully designed $ 300 phone with medium specifications compared to the OnePlus 2, which was also released in the same year. It was supposed to be a one-time phone for the company, and a successor was never mentioned.

Earlier this year, rumors surfaced about an 8 Lite. And now that OnePlus has confirmed that such a device is in operation, it’s good to see the company returning to its roots and doing what made it popular in the first place – well-made phones at far lower prices than his Competitors to sell. While current OnePlus devices still sell for hundreds of dollars less than Apple, Samsung and Google, it was difficult for OnePlus to keep prices down. Compared to other brands, OnePlus had one of the highest cost increases from model to model.

Juan Garzón / CNET

A typical example: the latest OnePlus 8 Pro itself. It has 5G, a 120 Hz display and wireless reverse charging. It starts at $ 899, but the higher model with 12 GB RAM / 256 GB costs $ 1,000. The company also showed that Concept one at CES 2020 a phone with a “disappearing” rear view camera that turns black when not in use. Although, as the name suggests, it’s just a concept phone, the company is working to apply this feature to future devices.

In one 2018 interview with CNETCEO Pete Lau said OnePlus is a “flagship-focused” company. The creation of another OnePlus X would be a kind of “compromise” that we do not like to accept in terms of the technical data.

But since then, the ship has been sailing for OnePlus for a long time, only to release one or two phones a year as before. Last year it only released variants of its OnePlus 7 Pro and OnePlus 7T marquee phones. However, so many versions of these two devices were released for different markets that CNET was forced to do so write down an explainer just to keep some of them straight. (In addition to the 7 Pro and 7T, there were the OnePlus 7, 7 per 5G, 7T Pro, 7T Pro McLaren and 7T Pro 5G McLaren. Phew.)

Adding a mid-range device would not be too complicated (assuming OnePlus doesn’t release more versions of the OnePlus 8), and it would be a convenient time to do so. Apple and Samsung have launched their own $ 400 cell phones iPhone SE 2020 and the Galaxy A51or Google’s Pixel 3A doubled the company’s pixel sales expected to continue this year.

OnePlus’ new flagship 7T Pro receives supercar treatment

Show all photos

What would the OnePlus version of an iPhone SE, Galaxy A51 or Pixel 3A have? Since it was so long ago that the OnePlus X came out (it had no LTE and you could only get it by invitation when OnePlus did it earlier), there is plenty of room for improvement. Ideally, it would cost around $ 300 to really stand out from the $ 400 phone volume (there are rumors that Pixel 4A could be as cheap as $ 350). And it definitely doesn’t need the eye-catching orange and leather design that goes with a McLaren partnership. Here are some other features it could include.