Well, the wait is over. The OnePlus 5 launch date is finally out, and the smartphone is going to be released on June 20. The launch will happen in truly OnePlus style through online live stream and will be marked by several pop events in different parts of New York, Amsterdam, London, Paris and many other cities of Europe. Finally, the India launch will happen two days later in Mumbai on 22nd of June at 2:00 PM.
The company is giving out invites for its India launch event in Mumbai at the rate of Rs. 999. The attendees will be rewarded with a launch t-shirt and OnePlus Welcome Pack worth Rs. 10,000, which will include a backpack worth Rs. 3,990, sunglasses worth Rs. 6,000 and a discount coupon worth Rs. 999. The coupon, however, will be credited to your OnePlus account and can be used only for the purchase of OnePlus 5 within 3 days of being added to the account.
Besides that, the company has also launched a contest in which its fans can participate to win a brand new OnePlus 5 for free. To participate they’ll have to inform their family and friends about the launch of OnePlus 5 via SMS alert and urge them to watch the event live stream. Five lucky winners will win the latest OnePlus 5 smartphone and their names will be announced on 30th of June at company’s official Facebook page.
With these announcements the company has also dropped the very first official image of device. Until now all leaked renders of OnePlus 5 were concepts created by the fans, but now the company has come out itself to reveal the first official image of device. The image was revealed in a Tweet, and since then company has plastered it all over its social media accounts. It’s a shot taken from side that shows the top half of device from rear side, and it shows a horizontal dual-camera setup. So Samsung, Galaxy Note 8 has already been piped in at least one major department.
A continuous hard edge, refined over 3 years. https://t.co/KVXBWmhBt8 pic.twitter.com/KBNppQ0R0U
— OnePlus (@oneplus) June 8, 2017
The company is proudly boasting about its dual rear camera setup and trying to position it as a photography-centric device. The image posted by company on its social media accounts proudly says “Dual Camera. Clearer Pictures.” It’s also worth mentioning that company has also partnered with DxO Labs, the company which operates widely popular camera benchmark website DxOMark.
Another thing that’s tough to ignore while looking at it is the similarity of design with iPhone 7 Plus. While OnePlus is certainly not ever going to agree on this and will try to differentiate its thing from that of Apple, it’s tough to look at this image and not be reminded of iPhone 7 Plus. It’s quite thin, and it doesn’t include a 3.5 mm headphone jack, just like iPhone 7 Plus. Other aspects of design also seem similar to iPhone 7 Plus.
As far as other features of this flagship are concerned, we certainly know about the important ones. The device will come with a Snapdragon 835 chipset and a whooping 8GB of RAM. These details are confirmed now, thanks to company’s official Amazon India listing page. While Snapdragon 835 is listed there prominently in a banner, the 8GB RAM part is hidden in the source code. The company itself has also been vocal about some of its features. For example, a few days ago company’s CEO and Co-Founder Pete Lau had said that the device will come with a front-facing fingerprint sensor.
Finally, the device is also expected to come in a 6GB RAM variant. While 8GB version is likely to have 128GB of storage, 6GB version is expected to come with 64 GB storage. And because of these powerful specs it’s expected to be the costliest OnePlus device till now. However, it may still be priced aggressively to compete with other similar offerings.