In the era of online shopping, when you can buy almost everything under the sun with just a click of a button, it was surprising to see hundreds of people lining up before the One Plus mobile store on Brigade Road on Saturday morning. Undeterred by the sweltering heat, people waited impatiently to grab the first few phones at the launch.

The offline release of the phone was scheduled on Saturday in Bengaluru and Chennai. Though the phone was released on Amazon store online prior to offline sales, people thronged the store since there were not enough stocks.

 Though the store opened at 11 am, people had started assembling in front of the store as early as 8 am.

Ronak Paul, a resident of Old Madras Road said, “I have been waiting for this phone since June 10. I want to look at the phone before buying it since I am ready to pay almost Rs 40,000 for it.”

 Ram Swaroop, another buyer, felt the same. “This phone seems to have good features. But I want to look at the features before buying it. It is not a small investment.”

“I have been waiting here for hours. But I will leave only after buying one. This is the only brand next to Apple to offer such good features,” he added. Prasanjit Paul, a resident of KR Puram said, “With 128 GB memory, I can do a lot of things. All the other features seem to be good too. This is the only company that gives all these features within Rs 40,000. As an employee in EMC2 (a data storage selling company), I want to know more about the storage options. But I feel it is better to see it and then make a decision.”

 Once people got the phones, it was the beginning of the excitement. “I have been waiting for this phone for eight months. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Octa Core processor is what drove me to buy this phone. Since I knew that it was going to take eight months for its release, I even bought a small spare phone,” said a victorious Tony Philip, who waited for more than three hours in the queue.

  The two variants in OnePlus 5 are the one with the 6GB RAM and 64 GB memory and the other with 8 GB RAM and 128 GB memory. Along with this, the 16MP camera and the price of Rs 40,000 are the main features which are drawing the crowds.