If you keep up with phone news (and who doesn't, right?), then there's probably been more than a few times you've followed up with a device, thinking it was going to be the best thing ever, but had your mind completely changed when you finally got your hands on it. It's happened to me more than a few times over the years. The honeymoon with a new device can run aground pretty quickly, depending on what annoys you about certain handsets.
It can be easy to latch onto the excitement a company has for a certain phone. After all, you have to hope that they're excited because the phone's actually *worth* being excited about, and not just because it's their newest thing. It may be a blind hope, but a hope nevertheless. There's nothing wrong with being excited, of course, especially not if the excitement equals the experience.
If you looked back at your past phones, how many would you say you were happy with, versus disappointed with (especially the longer you owned it)?
Build up is part of the fun, though. Companies have to be excited about what they're going to release, because if they aren't, who else is going to be? There has to be some kind of attention drummed up, usually long before a handset's unveiling, because there needs to be attention drawn to it. One of the best companies at this, especially recently, is Oppo. They've got the whole, "Let's tease everyone!" thing down, and it's working for them.
There's another company that's looking to gain plenty of attention before its first handset of 2014 lands on store shelves. OnePlus, a company that shares a big detail with Oppo, is looking to release their One flagship this year, aiming for a second quarter launch. The OnePlus One is certainly drumming up interest, and we've yet to see anything on the device itself.
But that doesn't mean we aren't getting teased, and for anyone who loves their technology, it's happening in all the right ways. That thing that OnePlus and Oppo share is CyanogenMod -- both companies are looking for a cooperation with the house that built one of the most popular proprietary softwares around, and both are hoping it works out well for them. OnePlus, though, is also making sure that plenty of attention gets focused on the upcoming hardware, too.
But this honestly may be where things get tricky. With the company looking to launch their new device in the second quarter of 2014, they've got some heavy competition to go up against. HTC, for one, is probably going to release the successor to their own One around the same time. And then there's Samsung, which will throw its own weight around right at the start of the second quarter of this year.
OnePlus will have competition, but that's a good thing. The question is, though: How well will their bold statements stand up when the phone is finally released?
We don't know much of anything about the One flagship right now, other than it's going to bear support for nine bands of LTE-connectivity. 1/3/4/7/17/38/39/40/41. So, they've got you covered there. However, the key details, like screen size and resolution, processor, weight and thinness, camera(s), and even software features are still left in the dark.
That's where the teasing comes in. OnePlus is proud to say that their device will be "more attractive than just about any phone on the market," and that it will boast the "best components and 2014 flagship specs." I can see one of those two statements holding fast, but one of them is also weighed down by timing.
Judging your phone by what the current devices look like is great, except for the fact that Samsung, HTC, Apple, Motorola, LG and whoever else are already gearing up on launching something new this year. Both HTC and Samsung will have their new handsets out right around the same time as the OnePlus One, so that whole "more attractive" thing could get thrown right out the window.
So is the teasing working? Is OnePlus's sprinkling of information, of what could be, doing the intended job? Are people waiting with bated breath for what their One flagship device will look like, and what it will feature? That's what I want to know from you. Are you interested in what OnePlus has to show us later this year? Or has the constant barrage of teases left you underwhelmed? Let me know!
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