There was a time, back in the halycon days of HTC and Sony, when the launch of a new flagship Galaxy device was the end of the story. Samsung’s new phone would be the best Android phone you’d be able to buy that year, and that was the end of it.
But despite Samsung’s continued stranglehold over the premium Android market, things are changing a little. Chinese companies that once pumped out cheap and cheerful handsets are producing cutting-edge devices that threaten Samsung’s dominance, and no upstart has done more to upset the status quo than OnePlus. This year, things aren’t going any different.
Renowned mobile leaker Evan Blass just teased then posted a high-res picture of the new OnePlus 6 smartphone. It doesn’t tell us a lot about the specs or features of the new device, but it makes one thing clear: It’s gonna be a looker.
From the looks of the photo, the frame is a unibody aluminum or steel with a textured back. We’ve seen a different leaked photo of a version with a glass back, so chances are there will be more than one model available at launch. The metal frame looks to have a slight offset angle at the bottom, which is a welcome break from all the softly rounded corners we normally see. Bottom line is the design looks refreshingly different, which is a good thing.
Features-wise, we can see a headphone jack (!!!), USB-C port, and single speaker/mic grille. There’s also a hint of a fingerprint sensor, a dual-camera display, and what looks to be a volume rocker on the left side.
All of that lines up perfectly with other leaks and spec rumors we’ve seen so far, which suggest an all-screen design with an 18:9 aspect ratio, a Snapdragon 845 processor, 6GB or 8GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, and a dual camera setup on the back. OnePlus will likely team simple facial recognition with that fingerprint sensor for more secure unlocking or payment authentication.
The OnePlus 5T is already sold out in North America, which hints at a launch of the OnePlus 6 in the not-too-distant future, likely May or June. Price-wise, it can’t be too cheap with specs like that, but we’d guess at an unlocked price close to the Samsung Galaxy S9’s $720 RRP.
