We have seen that OnePlus’ flagship smartphones of the first half of this year have been launched as the OnePlus 8 series. This series comes with the regular OnePlus 8 and the OnePlus 8 Pro which comes with 120Hz AMOLED panel among other things. But we are also expecting another smartphone from OnePlus and the company has also confirmed the same. As per OnePlus CEO, they will be launching an affordable smartphone this year. Now, we can say that OnePlus is going back to its roots with an affordable smartphone but that will not be entirely true.
Because OnePlus has launched affordable phones previously while they were still the best in terms of performance. This time, the affordable smartphone from OnePlus rumoured to be named the OnePlus Z will cut some corners in order to reach that price. For example, we will not see a Snapdragon 800 series chip inside the device and the cameras will also be less in quantity and maybe quality. So instead of launching a ‘flagship killer’, OnePlus will now launch a mid-range killer smartphone in that price segment.
Now, a new development in the OnePlus Z story is that the phone reportedly visited Geekbench which is a benchmarking website. From the listings on this website, we can see that the OnePlus Z with a Snapdragon 765G processor and 12GB RAM was spotted. Note that Snapdragon 765G from Qualcomm is the second-best chip in its lineup of this year while the best remains to be the Snapdragon 865. Also, we believe that the base variant of OnePlus Z will have lesser RAM which might start at 8GB while the top-end variant might have 12GB RAM. Since the smartphone will have a chip designed for gamers and also have a 90Hz refresh rate, it will be marketed heavily as a gaming phone rather than a premium phone we believe.