After weeks of hype, the OnePlus 2 is finally here.
OnePlus just revealed the OnePlus 2, the follow-up to 2014’s OnePlus One, it’s first Android smartphone. The OnePlus 2 features several upgrades over its predecessor. Let’s start with the outside of the phone, which now includes one of the biggest additions to the OnePlus 2, a fingerprint reader. This reader can store up to five different fingerprints.
The OnePlus 2 also features a 5.5-inch 1920x1080 display and 5-megapixel camera on its face, and around back lives a 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization and laser focus. The bottom of the unit houses a USB Type-C connector, which ought to make plugging your phone in easier since its cords are reversible, and on the side lives a physical mute switch.
Inside of the OnePlus 2 lives an octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor that OnePlus has previously promised will not overheat. Also included is a 3300mAh battery, beefier than the juice pack found in the OnePlus One, as well as two different RAM and storage configurations: 3GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, or 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
The OnePlus 2 will come preloaded with OxygenOS, which is OnePlus’s custom version of Android. The company notes that while its software isn’t stock Android, it feels that the features that it’s added to Google’s OS “add real value to the user experience.” OnePlus’s software also supports custom icon packs and allows you to tweak the software’s accent colors to your liking, or just go all-out dark mode.
OnePlus also plans to offer StyleSwap covers with the OnePlus 2, which are back panels made of different materials that you can swap yourself. OnePlus says that it plans to offer Bamboo, Black Apricot, Rosewood, and Kevlar StyleSwap covers for the OnePlus 2.
Finally, the all-important availability information. The OnePlus 2 will launch on August 11 in the US, Canada, India, the EU, and China. It’ll roll to Southeast Asia in Q4 2015. As for pricing, the 3GB/16GB model will set you back $329, while the 4GB/64GB version will cost $389. To compare, the OnePlus One launched at $299 for a model with 16GB of storage, while the more capacious 64GB variant was $349.
Overall the OnePlus 2 looks like a nice upgrade from the original model. The overall design hasn't changed too much, but the One wasn't exactly a bad-looking device. What has changed are the OnePlus 2's internals, with OnePlus beefing the device up to become what you'd expect from a flagship smartphone in mid-2015. And it beefed up the OnePlus 2's specs without beefing up its price, at least not too much. While the high-end OnePlus 2 is around $30 more than the 64GB One when it launched, it's still several hundreds of dollars cheaper than most other high-end flagship smartphones.
So now that it's finally here, what do you think of the OnePlus 2?
