OnePlus One: The leaks, the pictures and the official announcement!

Mobiles, PDAs, Tech Gadgets Shiva Subramanian

The Open phone manufacturer OnePlus has openly stated on Reddit that it will deliver anything that you want it to, openly stating “Ask me anything”. The manufacturer is Chinese and is willing to consider public opinions- which is actually one of a kind.

OnePlus One Teaser

This was put up around March 5th, 2014. The phone asks its user to never settle – the full meaning should’ve been never settle for anything less. The phone will release in the second quarter and is said to be released in 10 countries from the start and will be available as an unlocked version (won’t be tied to Verizon or Sprint or whatever carrier). The phone will be available for $400. It is to come with CyanogenMod 11, 3GB of RAM and Snapdragon 800 chipset.

This is what the director of OnePlus Global, Carl Pei had to say.

We designed the OnePlus One to be easy to handle with one hand, while at the same time having the largest possible display size under these circumstances. How? By having a slim body, tapered edges and narrow bezels.

The OnePlus One will come with stereo speakers though we don’t know if It is in the front or the rear. The One is said to be a phone which is much better than the Oppo Find 5. The details about the battery are not known. It is said to come with a 5″ 1080p resolution display.

Launch date speculation for OnePlus One

The launch date was speculated to be on April 23, 2014. The company revealed a large portion of its specs already in the intention of creating a hype about the device. The phone is said to come with a 13MP Sony EXMOR Lens. The chipset inside is a Snapdragon 801 as opposed to the original 800. The unveiling was to be in Shenzen, China though that was not officially confirmed. The battery is a 3100 mAh and the phone is uni-body.

Accessories and Other specs release

This was more about the specs we already speculated about and a cover which comes in many shades and material. The back covers are called StyleSwap. This leak very much talked about the software running inside, and the availability. Lets see on that.

CyanogenMod 11S

This device runs on a customized version of CyanogenMod 11 and thereby to make it special the S is there beside it. It is based on Android 4.4 KitKat.

Accessories

The OnePlus One comes with accessories that should be bought alone(not free), but these are things that are required. You can say that anything outside of the phone may be called accessories. But each one of us have their definitions. The accessories that the One comes with are the proprietary connector which is unique like the 19 pin connector of the iPhone, and a microSIM ejector pin.

Availability

The OnePlus will be available in 16 countries and on April 23. There is an invitation system for purchasing the One which would actually make the device be in demand but this type of selling may be counter productive. But here are the company’s words on that.

To solve these problems, we have created a much more user friendly way of buying the device through the OnePlus Invite System. With an invite, you can be 100% sure that you’ll actually be able to buy it, and it ships within a few days. In contrast to staying up in the middle of the night trying to buy one along with 20,000 other people. So in the true spirit of the OnePlus name, a good product gets spread by word of mouth, shared among friends for that extra personalized touch

This is much like how Google did for its Gmail service which was by invitation only.

The Official announcement of OnePlus One

The OnePlus One was officially announced on the 23rd of April when it was expected. The phone came in various colors and the specs were very much the same standing at 3Gb of RAM, 5.5″ Display with 1080p support with a pixel density of 401ppi, and a quad core 2.5GHz processor. Here are some pics of the device.