OnePlus has ascended to the top tier of smartphones with its new OnePlus 8 series. Not necessarily in abilities (although early reviews are positive), rather in price.
The base model of the OnePlus 8 costs as much as the base model of the iPhone 11 ($699). This is fresh territory for the Chinese company and, I suspect, not a place it particularly wants to be.
Head-to-head I imagine most buyers would plump for the iPhone if given a straight choice, and the early camera reviews suggest that the OnePlus phone doesn’t compete with Apple’s tech (a difficult feat for any smartphone maker that isn’t Apple, Google or Samsung).
Of course 5G has put prices up, which the iPhone 11 doesn’t support, but do you know what will? The Google Pixel 5.
Google’s next flagship looks increasingly like it will house Qualcomm’s upper mid-range processor, the Snapdragon 765, which also supports 5G connectivity. If Google does go with this chipset then we can probably expect the Pixel 5 to reflect its mid-range processor with a (almost) mid-range price.
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Such a move would dramatically shake up the smartphone market. The search company would be offering its industry leading camera and 5G at, potentially, under $700.
For a company like OnePlus, that peels off customers from flagship Android makers like Google and Samsung, this is bad news. The Chinese company has done well to knockdown the price of a high-end, 5G enabled handset to $699 – especially compared to Samsung’s Galaxy S20 $999 entry point.
But for a company that used to call itself a “flagship killer”, an established – big name – rival undercutting it and making a technically superior phone (in the camera and AI departments, at least) would leave OnePlus stranded.
As much as OnePlus has attempted to rebrand in recent years to focus on performance and speed (which are important features if you want to hold on to your phone for more than 12 months), their real value has always been price.
The OnePlus 7 launched at $630, whereas the Samsung Galaxy S10’s base model cost $749 and the Pixel 3 cost $799. If you go back to the very first OnePlus One in 2014, which cost $299, the competition was selling devices for $500/$600.
It was easy to recommend a OnePlus phone when it was half, or two thirds, of the price of the competition. Missteps were overlooked because the pricing – and what you got for that price – was hard to ignore. But now that the OnePlus 8 is priced so closely to the rest, it’s harder to make that recommendation.
For people who are looking to upgrade this year, the possibility of a cheaper priced Pixel 5 isn’t the only reason it should be on your radar.
It’s no secret that Google’s camera technology is industry leading, which is largely thanks to its Pixel Neural Core co-processor. Also, the prospect of Google finally including a wide-angle lens in a Pixel phone is exciting, not to mention how improvements in AI and processing will dovetail with the new lens.
Elsewhere I’m keen to see what Pixel-specific features Google bakes into the Pixel 5. The Pixel 4 came with the Recorder app, which automatically transcribes recordings (a necessity for a journalist) and live captions, which automatically transcribes muted videos – a life saver on public transport (this eventually made it over to Samsung’s Galaxy S20 range).
Other now widely available AI tech – like Duplex – is often limited to Pixel users at launch. I suspect Google will have more Pixel-exclusive AI services to show us this year.
The point here is that Google has unique, next generation technology that’s developed in-house and is used exclusively in its Pixel phones. Manufacturers that rely on off-the-shelf tech from other firms can’t say that.
Combine this with a cheaper price point and we could be looking at one of the most impressive, value for money, handsets of 2020. I’d say that’s worth waiting for.