OnePlus have openly come out and said that they will be one of the first companies to bring a 5G phone to the market in 2019. Of course you would expect a phone being release in the next few months to be well into development, and today’s leak gives us the first look at one prototype.
While today’s leak shows Pete Lau (OnePlus CEO) talking to a slide showing a red 5G OnePlus phone, along with another executive sitting at the table with a white 5G phone it is worth remembering that every company goes through a lot of prototypes before settling on a final hardware design. We saw OnePlus show off all the prototypes it used for the OnePlus 5 as well as all the prototype covers it used for the OnePlus 6 so there is no doubt that this phone is just one in what is a large number of prototypes.
EXCLUSIVE! Here's your first look at an upcoming OnePlus Device I don't know much about. This image shows the device in prototype/designing stage and it is not final but this is probably how the device may end up looking. That's Pete (CEO of OP) in the img and the device itself. pic.twitter.com/Yau9EsgSDy
— Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) December 19, 2018
Of course, that does not prevent us from checking out this prototype as you would expect the final hardware revision to be fairly close to this image. The phone is squarer than their phones of the last couple of years and has a large black circle on the rear for the camera.
Little detail can be seen within this leak aside from the two colours (which mean little) and the camera circle. There is no fingerprint sensor on the rear suggesting that OnePlus will stick with the in-display fingerprint sensor of the OnePlus 6T.
Of course there is no doubt that there will be quite a few leaks of the OnePlus 5G device in the upcoming months but it is good to get a quick look at it now — although this may well not be the final design. OnePlus are improving every single year and 2019 looks to be another year where they take a big leap forwards.
Do you put any credence in this leak? Is it too far out from production to be assuming this is the final design? Will you bother getting a 5G device at this early stage?