You know how some companies think it’s a good idea to have their fans buy flamethrowers, which aren’t really flamethrowers but are sold as such? Well, OnePlus has clever marketing tricks of its own, and the latest one is a Snowbot that can fire snowballs at insane speeds up to 120 miles per hour. That’s just insane, and it’s all in the name of science. Well, 5G science, that is. You can’t buy these devices — and OnePlus did tease that its mysterious new product will not be a commercial device or a smartphone. However, you will be able to pilot these Snowbots yourself directly from your phone.
The Snowbots are part of a OnePlus program meant to demo the capabilities of 5G connectivity. The whole gist of this brilliant marketing campaign is to use your phone to control one of these snowball-throwing robots to beat the other team.
The fight takes place in Lapland, Finland, for 70 consecutive hours starting on March 3rd. You’ll need to register online to fight in this battle, and you’ll then have to wait for your turn to throw eight snowballs at blazing speeds against the two robots on the other team.
You’ll apparently need a OnePlus 5G phone to join the fight, according to OnePlus’s announcement, although it’s unclear what happens if you attempt to register from a non-OnePlus device:
The Snowbots will be operated through OnePlus devices with a 5G network equipped with powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, brought to the remote Lapland region by Finnish operator Elisa, allowing thousands of community members from across the globe to experience a seamless and lag-free offline-to-online gaming experience like never before seen.
You will need 5G or a good Wi-Fi connection to control the Snowbots. OnePlus is also hosting a contest on its forum for European OnePlus fans, who can win an all-inclusive trip to Lapland to fight the Snowbots in person.
In case it wasn’t clear by now, the Snowbot robot is the product that OnePlus teased in recent videos, not some sort of new smartphone component. Here’s another look at this 5G contraption:
As for the OnePlus 8 Pro, the company is yet to reveal announcement plans for its next 5G phone.
