The OnePlus 3 launched to positive reviews this week and it will finally available to purchase without having to jump through an annoying invite-only system. If you were hoping for a similar upgrade to the budget OnePlus X, however, the company's CEO Pete Lau has just confirmed there won't be any. OnePlus will focus on a single "true flagship" model going forward.
Speaking to Engadget, Lau said they're not interested in fighting the low-end price war and they're also being more careful about where they put their marketing, sales and development efforts. As part of this refocusing OnePlus says it plans to merge development resources for the global Oxygen OS (near-native Android) and the China-only Hydrogen OS (skinned Android), and will make an announcement on that front later this year.
OnePlus will continue to use non conventional advertising channels in order to pass the savings on to customers. Indeed the OnePlus 3 is a great value at $400, offering great overall build quality along high end components such as a 5.5-inch SuperAMOLED 1080p display, a Snapdragon 820 processor, a whopping 6GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage.
Lau says OnePlus is doing very well across Europe, India and the US. The company remains cautious in China, where many of its competitors operate on cutthroat low margins, and plans to rely on online sales rather than opening any new physical retail stores there.