China's OnePlus, Backed by Qualcomm and T-Mobile, Launches OnePlus 6T Smartphone in US (reuters.com)

OnePlus, a five-year old Chinese smartphone company whose high-end products are little known outside a tech-savvy niche is entering the U.S. market on Monday with the backing of two key local allies: chipmaking giant Qualcomm and mobile operator T-Mobile. Reuters reports: The foray by Shenzhen-based OnePlus comes after U.S. mobile carriers AT&T and Verizon this year backed away from plans to work with China's Huawei on high-end phones in face of pressure from the U.S. government, which considers Huawei a security risk. But the OnePlus alliance, to be announced today in New York, shows how many U.S.-China business relationships, including those involving the most advanced technologies, are marching ahead despite the U.S. China trade war. OnePlus has quietly become the No. 3 client for Qualcomm's most expensive mobile phone chips, behind Samsung and LG Electronics, according to data from market researcher Canalys.

The phone to be unveiled Monday, called the 6T, will sell for a price of $549 (for the base model, which offers 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage) but packs features that are typically present only in pricier handsets. Xiaomi, a Chinese rival that also focuses on feature-packed phones at bargain prices, has said it plans to launch in the U.S. next year, but did not respond to a request for comment on whether those plans are still in place. The OnePlus 6T will laregely offer the same specs as its predecessor -- the OnePlus 6, which was launched earlier this year. Some of the key changes include a smaller notch on the front display and a built-in fingerprint scanner that is embedded in it. Full specs and review here.

Comments

And it STILL phones home to Red China

[Anonymous Coward]

All the time it has been doing this oneplus says "will fix". NEVER HAS FIXED!

Sigh.

[ledow]

No headphone.
No expandable storage.
No removeable battery.

But you can load it up with cameras and shite I don't want.

No sale.

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilariously people still say "BT earphones" as if it's some kind of replacement for a headphone jack. If I want Kobe steak and you say "it's okay we'll go to McD's", you should expect to be laughed at.

Re:Sigh.

[dbitter1]

I have a 1+ 6. Unlockable bootloader, with NO drama. (And, hence, easily rootable). First phone with dual sim, nice for overseas travel. Great coverage of the LTE bands, pretty much everything other than Verizon, who hates customers anyway.

The only other real candidate for a drama-less unlock is Google (Pixel)... and they don't have expandable storage or removable battery either. Came from a LG G6, with plenty of firmware bugs... never going back to them as they cherry pick what they will let you unlock. If I'm paying for the hardware, it better not be crippled.

I'd rather have the Chinese listen to me [effortlessly] than the rest of the world.

Limited time offer: security monitoring for free

[elrous0]

Live 24/7 security monitoring of all your capitalist yankee calls is provided free of charge for an unlimited time, courtesy of Glorious Leader Xi Jinping.

$500...is now a "bargain".

[geekmux]

"The phone...will sell for a price above $500 but packs features that are typically present only in pricier handsets."

At first I thought to myself, "Are they insane? $500 isn't some bargain."

Then I went and looked at the MSRPs of smartphones, and was quickly reminded why it makes little sense to play that game. Blows me away what smartphone junkies will spend on hardware these days.

Re:$500...is now a "bargain".

[squiggleslash]

You can get some surprisingly good phones for $60 if you look around (Blu R1 HD I got three years ago was excellent at the time); $200-250 seems to be the going rate for a 5" phone with decent performance and enough storage that an SD card isn't necessary.

My rule for Android phones is that the more you spend, the shittier the phone is likely to be. Phones in the $150-250 range will generally come with headphone jacks, expandable storage, often with dedicated buttons on the bezel (no more guessing where you have to swipe from to get the buttons to appear on a full screen app), dual SIMs, battery lives longer than a day etc. As the phone gets more expensive, the headphone jacks and storage starts to disappear and the battery life gets shorter.

They sell because people are gullible and think pricier=better.

Re: Sigh. Double sigh

[theshowmecanuck]

The cloud. AKA, somebody else's computer. If you don't understand the issue, just vote Trump. You already want to make it easy.