OnePlus Ace is a week from launch – and it could be the fastest charging OnePlus yet
One phone with three names
There are a lot of OnePlus phones planned for this year, but the next one could be among the most exciting, and the company has now confirmed that this handset (dubbed the OnePlus Ace) will be fully unveiled on April 21.
This was revealed by the company on Weibo (a Chinese social network), and the announcement included images of the phone, showing off a very different design to what we’ve seen from OnePlus before.
Half of the back has stripes running down it, while the other half is plain. The sides meanwhile are flat, and there's no alert slider, a handy feature found on many OnePlus phones. We can also see that there's a triple-lens camera, with one big lens and two smaller ones.
OnePlus hasn't confirmed any specs of the OnePlus Ace yet, except it kind of has, because the company also recently revealed that the OnePlus 10R would be unveiled in India on April 28, and that phone looks exactly the same, so presumably they're the same handset under different names.
Admittedly, we don't know much about this phone either, but the company has said that it supports 5G and comes in two versions - one with 80W charging and one with 150W charging, the latter of which is a tech the company revealed it was working on a while back.
For reference, the OnePlus 10 Pro only has 80W charging, so that would be quite an upgrade.
The rest of the specs might not be though, as while they haven't been revealed yet, previous leaks suggested the OnePlus Ace would be a rebranded Realme GT Neo 3, and that phone also has those charging powers, so this checks out.
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If it is the Neo 3 in all but name then you can expect a 6.7-inch 1080 x 2412 AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a 5,000mAh battery in the 80W model or a 4,500mAh one in the 150W version, a reasonably speedy MediaTek Dimensity 8100 chipset, up to 12GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of storage.
The Realme GT Neo 3 also has a triple-lens camera, with a 50MP main sensor, an 8MP ultrawide one (with a 120-degree field of view), and a 2MP macro one, plus a 16MP snapper on the front.
So those are fairly high-end specs, but it's only on the charging front that it might have the OnePlus 10 Pro beat, though it's also sure to cost less than that phone. Of course, we're not totally sure that the OnePlus Ace is the Realme GT Neo 3, but it's looking very likely.
Analysis: will the OnePlus Ace go global?
Since this launch appears to just be for China, we can't be sure whether other regions like the US and UK will get the OnePlus Ace, but there's certainly a chance they will.
Given that India seems to be getting it under the OnePlus 10R name, it's entirely possible that other parts of the world will get this phone too. Though probably not until later, since there's no word of a global launch.
If and when the likes of the UK and US do get this phone, it's more likely to land as the OnePlus Ace than the OnePlus 10R, since the OnePlus 9R was only available in India, and since OnePlus has confusingly said the OnePlus 10 Pro will be the only OnePlus 10 model - a claim which it now seems might only have applied to the west.
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Via Playfuldroid
James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.