OnePlus are back in the limelight with a new phone, the OnePlus X. The first device in a new product line, the X isn’t an out-and-out powerhouse but focuses on high quality materials and great design.
The OnePlus X comes in two variants, the Onyx and the Ceramic. The Onyx consists of jet black glass with a darkened silver aluminum frame and a slightly curved screen. The Ceramic has the same design but is composed of zirconium dioxide ceramic that has been moulded and baked in a 25-day process. As the press release says, “It’s a material that very few have attempted to use in a consumer device and even less have mastered.”
Specwise the OnePlus X is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.3 GHz processor with 3 GB RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU driving a 5″ 1080p AMOLED screen. There’s 16 GB of storage plus a microSD slot. Unlike the OnePlus 2, the X sticks with micro-USB rather than moving to USB C.
As usual with OnePlus, there’s an invite system to order the phone but in a change to the process, this will last for only a month before the X goes on general sale. Invites will be pushed out from 5 November (depending on region) and pricing appears to be US$249, GB£199 or 269€, but there’s an extra premium to pay for the limited edition Ceramic version.
Not sure if X is the letter or 10 in Roman numerals but either way it’s a sweet looking phone at a great price. With luck, GNC will get some hands-on time in the not-too-distant future.
I hear many stories like this regarding OnePlus and while I don’t dismiss them, I’ve had good experiences with them just as an ordinary user – I didn’t have to pull a “I’m a blogger”. I’ve both a OnePlus One and a Two paid for out of my own money, which I like, but the stories do concern me at times. I hope they get their act together and deliver for the long term.
So, put my name in, wait. Return to website during each narrow Monday time slot to try again. Wait. Jump up and down. Wait.
Or pay some more for a Nexus 5X, get it in 2 days, and be assured of prompt OS updates for 2 years.
To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction, “Then it had better be one charming m—–f—— phone!”