If anyone thought that OnePlus would slow down its cadence of smartphone releases as the market continues to mature, they were wrong. After launching both the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, and then separately launching the more affordable Nord, OnePlus announced it’s going full-steam ahead with the launch of the OnePlus 8T.
The event will take place online, of course, on October 14. The tagline of “Ultra Stops At Nothing” accompanies the announcement, but we don’t have much else to go on. There’s one small glimpse of a smartphone in the promo reel playing on the website, but there isn’t much to glean from it. You can make out a smooth metal side, a relatively small display bezel, and an earpiece speaker — that’s it.
Thankfully extensive leaks have given us much of the pertinent information about the 8T ahead of launch, including its 6.55-inch 120Hz display, top-tier specs, and a very familiar design to the OnePlus 8 series. The 8T is expected to be a successor to the base OnePlus 8, in that it will be slightly smaller and will lack extras like an IP resistance rating and wireless charging. Rumor has it that there won’t be a separate OnePlus 8T Pro, which is honestly a bit of a relief.
The “T” series phones have always been relatively small or iterative updates to fill the gap halfway between full releases. But this year could be a tad different considering the OnePlus 8 in particular was quite iterative over the OnePlus 7T. With OnePlus releasing multiple similar phones per year, it can be tough to get excited about any particular one, so it would probably be in the company’s best interest to make the 8T a single phone that’s a solid upgrade over the 8 but lets the 8 Pro live on as the proper flagship for the rest of its life.
We’ll see all of the details come through on October 14 — the show kicks off at 10 a.m. ET.