OnePlus no longer makes just smartphones. The Shenzhen-based company on Thursday launched two smart televisions, besides the latest version of its handset, the OnePlus 7T, at an event in Delhi.
The nearly 100-minute-long presentation, held at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Arena, was on the lines of Apple’s keynotes every September. Both founder, CEO, and chief product officer Pete Lau and co-founder Carl Pei, were present at the launch.
Reiterating how important the Indian market was for the company, OnePlus took the wraps off its first TVs for the first time in Delhi. Lau revealed the TVs had been developed over 14 months, a long time by today’s standards. Both TVs sport 55-inch 4K QLED screens and run Android TV with OnePlus Connect, the company’s customised interface to connect your phone. The OnePlus TV 55 Q1 is priced at ₹69,900, while the OnePlus TV 55 Q1 Pro, which features a sliding soundbar, will set you back by ₹99,900. At these prices, the OnePlus TV will compete with older LED offerings from Samsung and LG, and Vu’s big-screen range. Both TVs, which feature Dolby Vision and Atmos, will be available starting September 28.
The TV supports both Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, while Hungama, Eros and ZEE5 content has been integrated into the OnePlus Play dashboard. The TVs also support content from partners such as Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar, SonyLIV and YouTube, with Netflix being a major exclusion.
“We didn’t want to make an ordinary smart TV. We wanted to make a TV that would meet the highest standard in the industry, and one that would be a breakthrough in users’ home internet experience,” said Lau.
Earlier, Pei had said that OnePlus would be investing ₹1,000 crore into their R&D centre in Hyderabad over the next three years. He also revealed that OnePlus would soon bring service at your doorstep, being offered in some parts of Bengaluru, to the rest of the country. He also revealed features of the OnePlus 7T, the company’s half-yearly refresh for the company’s standard phones. Starting from ₹37,999, the phone features a 6.55-inch Fluid AMOLED display, and is powered by Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 855+ processor.
The triple-camera setup is encased in a polished circular module and features a telephoto, ultra-wide angle and nightscape lenses. Supporting Dolby Atmos, the phone can be charged to 70% of its battery capacity in just 30 minutes thanks to its Warp Charge 30T technology, the company says. The phones, with a matte frosted glass finish, are among the first phones to run Android 10 out of the box. The 8GB/128GB comes in glacier blue and frosted silver, while the 8GB/256GB version comes only in glacier blue. They would be available from September 28.
OnePlus, which says it was among the top four global premium smartphone brands and the top premium smartphone brand in India, has partnered with Gupshup, a Silicon Valley-based smart messaging platform, to provide automated classification and visualisation of messages that make it easier for users to manage their mobile inboxes. The new version of Oxygen OS also features a chromatic reading mode, and it will offer its users 5GB of free cloud storage, with an additional 50GB for the first year. The company also announced its plans to roll out its payments platform, OnePlus Pay, next year.
