In an interview with tech news site Engadget, OnePlus's CEO talked 5G smartphone prices, and considering the announcements made at the Snapdragon Tech Summit this week about the impressive tech that will be integrated into the upcoming device, your wallet is going to be pleasantly surprised.
OnePlus has made its name in the mobile industry after just five years by developing smart devices with premium parts and features for a mid-range price. With that being said, bringing customers an affordable 5G phone in 2019 is turning out to be difficult as the price of new tech leaps and jumps upwards, but company CEO Pete Lau is committed to keeping the cost of the flagship below $1,000 -- less than the standard price of this year's flagship devices.
In fact, Lau said in the interview that he would even prefer that the 5G premium adds no more than about $200 or $300 to the price; with the OnePlus 6T starting at $549, that could make the 5G device only about $750 or $850. If using the higher estimate, that price tag is still about a fourth less than that of the iPhone XS Max, Apple's 4G 2018 flagship model that was launched over two months ago.
Though that's still quite a bit higher than what we would typically expect from OnePlus, 5G is turning out to be an expensive upgrade to make -- the components are far more expensive than what's available on the market today. Still, the company is determined to bring its customers the latest and greatest technology on the market; at the Snapdragon Tech Summit this week, Lau announced that the upcoming OnePlus 5G device will be one of the first on the market to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855, a mobile platform that was just publicly announced on Tuesday. Actually, this phone, which will be produced in partnership with UK carrier EE, could be the first 5G model to make it to Europe, likely in May, Lau told CNET.
For a company founded in 2013, OnePlus has quickly secured itself in the international smartphone market proving itself a worthy competitor of companies that have been developing such devices for decades. This year, it managed to expand to the US market by landing a carrier deal with T-Mobile and gaining a compatibility certification with Verizon. As one of the first providers of a 5G device, OnePlus is likely to continue to make waves in the mobile industry.
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