The OnePlus 8T made its global debut earlier this month as the company’s last flagship for the year, but new information suggests that its successor might not be too far away and will launch in early 2021.
The OnePlus 8 series was unveiled in mid-April this year, followed by the OnePlus 8T exactly six months later. Both of these were already launched a month earlier than their respective predecessors in 2019. It seems like this trend will continue in 2021 for the OnePlus 9 series.
According to sources speaking with Android Central, the OnePlus 9 will be released in mid-March 2021. That is four weeks earlier than many had expected.
- What you need to know about the OnePlus 9
- Our full OnePlus 8T review
- Perhaps you'd prefer the best OnePlus phones?
While the exact launch date is to be determined, the move should let OnePlus run shoulders with the competition. Interestingly, even the Samsung Galaxy S21 series is said to launch in early January, a good six weeks earlier than the usual mid-February schedule.
Take all this information with a pinch of salt as none of this has been confirmed by OnePlus. Usually, OnePlus has let flagships from Samsung, Oppo, LG and Xiaomi take the lead with their flagship launches in the first quarter of the year before catching up in the following months.
A shorter refresh cycle should help it compete with them from the beginning, potentially resulting in better sales. It’s unclear if this also implies an earlier launch for the OnePlus 9T series or if the OnePlus 9 will be on sale for longer. Current information doesn’t confirm if there will also be a OnePlus 9 Pro or just a single phone in the series.
Based on past launches, we expect the OnePlus 9 series to sport the new 65W Warp charging along, at least 120Hz refresh rate and a bunch of cameras on the rear.
It might also follow by the new design language that debuted on the OnePlus 8T owing to its practicality. The 5nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 is also pretty much guaranteed to power it along with oodles of RAM and fast storage.
Before that, we are also expecting two more affordable devices in the Nord series, but they might not be globally available.
