When the OnePlus 2 was publicly announced online on July 27th, it was branded as the 2016 Flagship Killer. Apparently a lot of people are believers. Just days after the launch, OnePlus announced they had hit the 1 million reservations mark and today they have posted on Twitter & Google+ that they have reached the 2 million mark. That’s two million people willing to buy just 10 days after launch. For a start up – for really any device manufacture – that’s an impressive clip.
Over 2 MILLION reservations for the #OnePlus2. Thank you for your overwhelming support! http://t.co/7CBjiXrOgp pic.twitter.com/F7nSSwwyRK
— OnePlus (@oneplus) August 6, 2015
The OnePlus 2 will start being available here in the United States on August 11th, next Tuesday, with those reservations starting to be filled. While there are a few of the devices out and about, there are not a huge number available yet and the reservation system is how OnePlus will be fulfilling orders.
As I put in my article on why the OnePlus 2 has to be a success for the company, this phone launch is critical for OnePlus overall as it will lay the foundation for their future. From a specifications perspective it is impressive but there are some features missing, most notably NFC. OnePlus has said publicly that they did not put NFC in the OnePlus 2 as it is not mature which, to a point, they are correct. However there is a truism in the world which is if one feature is missing, even if they will never use it, it turns people off to the device. Personally I hope that’s not the case as the other elements of the OnePlus 2 are mighty impressive.
Here is a run down of the key specifications of the OnePlus 2:
OnePlus 2
PROCESSOR
The first feature that was announced by OnePlus on the OnePlus 2 was the processor that will be powering the phone. It will be a Snapdragon 810 v2.1. This processor is an eight-core, 64-bit architecture processor and is able to support things like 4K video, exceptional battery life and coupled with the Adreno 430 GPU. What isn’t clear is the processor speed. According to Qualcomm, the 810 can run as high as 2.5GHz but to save battery life, it could be throttled back a bit.
STORAGE
The OnePlus 2 will have 64GB of storage on board. There will be a 16GB version available in a few weeks.
CAMERA
The rear camera will be a 13MP OIS camera while the front camera will also be 13MP. The camera software built into OxygenOS, the version of Android that OnePlus has been building in-house, will have the ability to shoot up to 50MP images from the rear camera. The camera also uses lasers for faster focusing, especially in low light.
CONNECTOR
If there was any doubt if USB Type-C was going to be “Apple only”, remove that doubt now. The OnePlus 2 will have the latest USB standard which has a huge number of benefits for users. First, it doesn’t matter how you insert the connector into your phone, it is universal unlike the MicroUSB standard. Second, the throughput of the Type-C supports the USB 3.1 standard and can output of up to 20v and 100w of power and it is bi-lateral so you can charge a device while a peripheral device is connected to it.
FINGERPRINT SCANNER
The OnePlus 2 is the first phone to announce the Type-C connector as it’s connector and while they may not be the first to market, it will certainly set the standard for other manufactures to quickly adopt the standard.
This week OnePlus announced that the OnePlus 2 will have an advanced fingerprint scanner for bio-metric security. The company is promising that it will be superior to TouchID from Apple which is generally considered to be the standard for the industry. How exactly they will do this is a great question. Will it be on the front? Will it be on the back? It’s unclear but clearly mobile device security is an ever increasing need for both consumers and businesses.
RAM
In a recent blog post, One Plus confirmed that the OnePlus 2 will have an impressive 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. This is really key in combination with the Snapdragon 810 processor because it can actually take advantage of all that RAM. This is mainly due to the 64-bit architecture of the chipset. The LPDDR4 will run at 1.1v, less than DDR3 (think better battery life) and will have throughput of 32GB/s. That will be plenty powerful for any Android app you put on the phone. Period.
PRICE
The OnePlus 2 16GB unit will be $329 while the 64GB will be $389. This is just slightly more than the OnePlus One.
