OnePlus to skip premium 'T' series phone launch this year

The Chines company's CEO and co-founder Pete Lau also shared the vision of OnePlus 2.0 journey

For the last few years, OnePlus has been launching two premium phone series-one each in the first and second half of the year. But, we may not see the OnePlus 'T' series this time.

Pete Lau, CEO and co-founder of OnePlus in an virtual interaction with select media oulets has confirmed that the there won't be any premium phone launch in 2021, but revealed there will be one, which many believe it to be the mid-range OnePlus 9RT.

The OnePlus 9RT is said to be exclusive to India and China. It will retain some of the key features of the predecessor OnePlus 9R. It will sport an AMOLED screen panel with support for a 120Hz display refresh rate and feature a higher-binned version of the Snapdragon 870 chipset and a 4,500mAh battery with 65W fast charging support.

One of the big upgrades expected in the OnePlus 9RT is the main 50MP camera. It will feature Sony IMX766 sensor. Also, the device will run Android 12-based OxygenOS 12 out-of-the-box.

Though Lau did not reveal any specific reason for the cancellation of the OnePlus T series phones, it is widely reported to be due to the shortage of premium mobile chipset supply.

Even Samsung faced a similar issue and had to skip the company's most popular Note phone series early this year.

In a related development, Lau has detailed the OnePlus 2.0 journey, which will see sister company Oppo joining forces to develop a unified operating system for both their phones in near future.

Unified OS for Oppo and OnePlus devices from 2022. Credit: Oppo

The company had already announced they would do codebase integration of OxygenOS 12 and ColorOS 12. However, this year, they will be delivered to respective branded phones.

Early next year, the companies will offer a unified operating system for all new OnePlus and Oppo phones. They say that it will help them bring more engineers together to deliver a better software experience and also deploy timely updates to the devices.

OnePlus has confirmed it will launch the new premium phone in 2022 with brand new OS.

"In terms of timeline, for global OnePlus devices, we will first introduce the integrated OS with the launch of our next flagship series in 2022. The integration will be fully completed together with the next major Android update in 2022. We will share more details about when specific devices will receive the new OS at a later date," Pete Lau concluded.

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