Another market killer high-end smartphone expected in India

The race to create a high-end and powerful handset is like a cold war in the making. Top brands such as Sony, HTC, Samsung, LG, iPhone and LG are constantly unveiling ultra high-end smartphones with powerful hardware and display screens. However, the price tag on these smartphones is out of reach of the common man. While the affluent can afford the well-known brands, the common man is constantly hunting for powerful smartphones, but cannot afford the overpriced bill.

In order to capture the market and make powerful handsets more pocket friendly, Indian smartphone manufacturers have been pushing out their booty with lower price tags. However, on the contrary, some of the manufacturers end up cutting corners to keep the price low. The quality of the phones is sacrificed in order to keep the price of their smartphones in an affordable range. These areas would include the quality of the chassis, the HD displays, lower internal memory and substandard camera performance.

We don’t blame them for their offerings, which is as far as they can provide in order to bring the cost down and make reasonable profits. However, well-known renowned brands from China have been stepping into the Indian smartphone market and giving the Indian smartphone manufacturers a run for their money.

Brands like Gionee, OPPO and Xiaomi have already shown the common man that he can buy a smartphone, which is almost at par with most leading brands, within a decent budget. The phones these brands from China offer sport a great hardware chipset, for example, the Snapdragon 800 which is seen on almost every high-end branded handset.

Around a year after Gionee stepped in, OPPO also showed the Indian market that there are some great smartphones out there apart from the well-known brands. Xiaomi has also entered the Indian market to show the market that there are alternatives to powerful handsets in a reasonable budget.

With Indian smartphone manufacturers already shaky about their future with the new entrant, here comes news about OnePlus stepping into the Indian sub-continent.

OnePlus is a smartphone manufacturer from China, headquartered in ShenZhen and according to Wikipedia, the company was founded in December 2013. However, the manufacturer seems to give its best potential to compete with existing brands.

OnePlus announced the OnePlus One Android phablet in April 2014, which is powered by CyanogenMod operating system, a very famous Android custom ROM. The OnePlus One is powered by the presently most powerful chipset, the Snapdragon 801 chipsets, featuring a 2.5GHz quad-core processor in tandem with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 graphics unit. The display screen is a 5.5-inch LTPS IPS full HD Touch-on-Lens technology LCD sporting a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels and protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The rear camera has a 13MP Sony EXmor IMX214 sensor with six lens elements to avoid distortion and color aberration, and a twin LED flash. The camera is capable of shooting 4K resolution videos and 720p videos at 120fps. The front camera has a 5MP sensor. The speakers are front-facing boom stereo speakers, which is similar to the ones on the HTC models, for additional audio performance.

Connectivity options include LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth v4.0, NFC, GPS and GLONASS. The OnePlus One is available in two storage variants—a 16GB and a 64GB, but cannot be expanded since there is no micro SD card slot. The phablet is powered using a 3100 mAh battery, is 8.9mm thick, weighs in at 162 grams and is powered using CyanogenMod 11S, which is a custom flavour of Android built on KitKat v4.4.

At present, the smartphone is available for $299 for the 16GB variant, while the 64GB version is available for $349. We don’t have any information about the when the brand is making its entry into the Indian market, but it seems like they can be here soon before the iPhone 6 makes a showdown.