OnePlus X Arrives In November With Refreshingly Good Looks, Snapdragon 801, $249 Price Tag
Starting off with its looks, the OnePlus X actually drops the plastic-heavy construction of the OnePlus One and Two in favor of a design that is composed primarily of glass and aluminum. You’ll of course find a glass-covered front display, as well as glass on the back of the device in the standard “Onyx” configuration. However, OnePlus will also offer a more premium “Ceramic” model, which is 22 grams heavier and cost an additional $30. Only 10,000 Ceramic models will be produced, and none of them will make it to the United States.
Under the 5-inch Full AMOLED HD display (a first for OnePlus), you’ll find some decidedly old hardware lurking around. A 2014-era Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with 3GB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage, and a microSD slot for expansion (up to 128GB). Primary photography is taken care of by a 13MP rear camera (you won’t find 4K recording, unfortunately), while an 8MP front-facing camera handles all of your selfie shots. And while the OnePlus 2 makes use of a new USB-C port to handle charging duties, the OnePlus X uses the older microUSB interface to recharge its 2525mAH battery.
You’ll also have to make do with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 instead of the newer 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 standards. And you won’t find a fingerprint reader, or a home button for that matter, on the OnePlus X.
However, those are rather small concessions considering the fact that the OnePlus X will launch at $249 in the U.S. on November 11th. That’s a small price to pay for a smartphone that is packed with features. In fact, it makes the One A9 look overpriced at $399, and even more so when that smartphone rises to $499 on November 7th. OnePlus surely is a disrupter in the smartphone marketplace; now if only it could fix the borked invite system…
