OnePlus started their campaign with the OnePlus One back in 2014. The company managed to stay in the headlines for long, not only because the OnePlus One was a truly nice phone for the money, but also for the invite system which was kind of new back then.
Fast forward to 2016, and people are tired of waiting in long queues, flash sales, and invite systems. Make no mistake, spending $300-400 on a phone is no joke this year, for some seriously powerful phones are available for half that much.
Which is perhaps why, OnePlus have decided to do away with invites. You read it right — the OnePlus 3 will be available invite-free.
“We’re releasing the OnePlus 3 invite-free, right from launch day. In addition, invites are gone forever from future OnePlus product launches”
Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus was quoted in his forum post: “We’re releasing the OnePlus 3 invite-free, right from launch day. In addition, invites are gone forever from future OnePlus product launches”.
Gizchina News of the week
The OnePlus 3 will officially launch 14th June (in a VR launch). To make things convenient, OnePlus have posted the time zones in different areas:
- 12.30 PM EDT (New York)
- 9.30 AM PDT (San Francisco)
- 4.30 PM UTC/GMT
- 5.30 PM BST (London)
- 6.30 PM CEST (Paris)
- 10.00 PM IST(Bengaluru)
Opinion: OnePlus managed to pull this off at the right time. Stretching the invite system to the OnePlus 3 would’ve meant people looked elsewhere, for there are companies offering a decent phone without having to scour for invites and/or waste time in flash sales.
So gear up for June 14th. Let’s see what OnePlus have in store — love them or hate them, OnePlus are an exciting bunch. There’s an app you can download to be able to watch the launch and purchase the OnePlus 3 — all in VR!
with so much amazing smartphones available this isnt even interesting to me not even the slightest
It’s very interesting to me. Outside of Zuk this year has been very very underwhelming for flagships.
because you consider the flagships to be midrangers
Depends on the phone and company. The Zuk Z2 isn’t a flagship, the Z2 Pro is. For Oneplus the 3 is their flagship.
really cause when i look at all these smarphones i barely see much difference on paper zuk has great spec to cash ratio thats for sure i dunno this one plus doesnt look like its offering anything compelling to me :/
It sounds like it’s gonna have similar specs to the Zuk for the same price.
Balco now you have no excuses.
I don’t know I used a friends Huawei Mate 8 yesterday and fell in love….
Did they UI get better like many people said?
I didn’t use it for long enough to really say. But overall I didn’t have any issues with it. With the P8 the issues were apparent almost immediately.
Nice phone,I liked the Mate 7 a lot too, but… Too much money
I’m finding the Mate 8 for around $450 online which is about what most Chinese flagships will cost on resellers.
IPhone? What is that?
An overrated device that copies features from Android and passes them off as great innovations.
Muahahaha and better still apple then patented their copied features as theirs and start suing android vendors after that. WTF man LOL
It still has that nagging notification issue.
I turn notifications off on all phones so that really doesn’t affect me.
There ya go Balco 😉
This could convert me to the dark side!
“Now that we’re quite established, we’re also confident that the minuscule batches we’ll produce will sell out in seconds, as the historicals suggest.
We don’t have, and have never had, mass production plans, or even capacity, like Samsung or Apple. But we’ve successfully masqueraded this inability into “exclusivity”, with a miraculous campaign that has been based on the premise that OnePlus is an exclusive device only for the most fervent of fans, and that “good things” are meant to be shared within this network. And people have bought it. We have “fans”, so many of them.
And once again, we can pull off a similar trick. Where we stand today, it no longer makes sense to have an invite system. We can cut costs – no queues, no list and priority management needed. Everything remains the same – we remain as cautious as we previously were, we test the waters with batches small as ever, which will go out of stock instantly – but once again, we can masquerade this to work in our favor. How you may ask?
Well, by saying we are now invite free – which we are, but that doesn’t really change anything. It doesn’t change availability, it doesn’t put us at the risk of having surplus owing to a market approaching specs-homogeneity.
But run it – run this campaign well, let it be known that we’re now invite free and that OnePlus has graduated into a bigger entity. The gullible will not see the emperor’s new clothes.”
– Someone at OnePlus
Hahaha, nice article.
Comparing them to Samsung or Apple is like comparing Joe’s Pizza shop to Dominoes and Pizza Hut. They don’t have near the capital or manufacturing capacity to match either of those two. Better companies to prepare them to are Zuk and Meizu two companies that also have limited availability at first. Even Xiaomi who is one of the 5 largest companies in the world doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity that Samsung or Apple does.
Meizu? Nah, I’d say they’re right up there.
I’m talking in terms of production capacity. Meizu produces 20 million phones a year, Samsung produces 20 million Galaxys just for North America.
Yes, but that’s mainly because there are only 20m takers for Meizu phones.
True but if there were 100 million, Meizu wouldn’t have the capital or capacity to meet that demand on day 1 which would create shortages.
NAILED IT!
Rumor has it that big bro OPPO will be getting more involved and helping out with production this time around. So we will either be pleasantly surprised or be let down again.
The phone looks without identity and is quite ugly design, no special features, they have to price this very VERY well.
249?
This is excellent news! Could be my first ever OnePlus device.
You said you’ll buy one if they go invite free 😀
I’m seriously considering it
I’m also, in case the reviews prove that camera is at least as good as on my current device (nexus 5x).
Im also considering the Nexus 6P, I’m really interested in Project Fi.
Another phone for people who don’t even need it since they can’t even get those puny ROM filled up lol.
because no one wants to buy it anymore
I do.
We can’t buy directly from Australia, so it does not matter. I bought my OPO from re seller at $50 premium.