Apparently you also dial down the spec list and up the design, making something that resembles the OnePlus X.
This phone is all about the materials used, the aesthetic of the phone taking centre stage to allow for some big changes in the way OnePlus makes it handsets.
The handset comes in onyx glass and fired ceramic, tapered into the 5-inch screen. That display is Full HD and OLED, which comes with a ‘duochrome’ mode that allows battery-saving notifications offered in black and white when you pull your phone out of the bag.
But when it comes to the spec list, don’t except to be overly excited. Firstly, OnePlus appears to have found a box of old Snapdragon chipsets from Qualcomm and decided to throw the 801 into the new phones. That’s right, a CPU from 2013.
It’s backed up with 3GB of RAM in fairness, but don’t expect the OnePlus X to win any smarpthone speed races – just keep rolling your finger over the lovely ceramic back.
Not all fur coat
There are some decent parts though: this phone can handle a microSD card, which sadly can’t be used as part of the internal storage as the OnePlus X is based on Android 5.1, with OxygenOS the main overlay adding more functionality to the mix.
This includes a ‘Shelf’ that’s accessed from the home screen with a swipe to let you see your favourite apps and widgets, and a slider on the side of the phone to let you set the phone from normal sound mode to priority only, all the way down to the classic ‘off, leave me alone phone fools’.
Bizarrely OnePlus is making a huge deal of the fact it’s packed an FM radio into the phone, pointing out how it won’t take data from your mobile plan or Wi-Fi. Because that’s a major problem that needed fixing.
The camera seems pretty powerful at 13MP on the rear with slow motion video capture and a fairly strong ability to capture low light images with an f/2.2 aperture, but it’s not going to be industry leading.
The 2525mAh battery should be good enough to last quite a while in this phone though, with the OLED screen, low, low power processor and the notifications optimiser – we’re looking forward to putting it through its paces.
The OnePlus X release date has been set for November 5 for the onyx edition and November 24 for the ceramic version. The former comes in at a rather reasonable Rs. 16,999 while the latter will set you back a fair amount more at Rs. 22,999, with invites needed to get your hands on both.