OnePlus Nord lower-priced phone line confirmed; first model to be unveiled July 10th with 5G

OnePlus today confirmed that it will use the OnePlus Nord name for a line of cheaper phones. Originally rumored to be called the OnePlus Z (the letter "X" was already used in 2015 for another low-priced OnePlus handset), the Nord name was discovered in a trademark application made by the company in March. In the announcement, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said, "We are immensely proud of our flagship products and will continue to create more tech-leading flagships for our users. Now we are excited to share the OnePlus experience with even more users around the world through this new product line."

Lau said that the OnePlus Nord will first be available in Europe and India. The latter is the second-largest smartphone market in the world but remains a developing country where pricing is important. In India, the OnePlus Nord will compete with Xiaomi whose value for money handsets sell very well in the region. Samsung's Galaxy A line will also be a rival for the OnePlus Nord in the market. More information will be announced by the company at a July 10th unveiling in India.

When the OnePlus One was released in April 2014 (by invitation only!), it was called by the manufacturer the "Flagship Killer" since it was priced at $299. At the time, that was approximately half the price of the Samsung Galaxy S5. The invitation system, which was used by the company to prevent it from building too many units, was dropped starting with 2016's OnePlus 3.

OnePlus got a big shot in the arm  in the second half of 2018 when the OnePlus 6T became the company's first model to be offered by a major U.S. carrier, T-Mobile. But one of the downsides to competing with other flagships based on price is that some corners had to be cut. For example, even though the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro were water-resistant, the company didn't pay for an IP rating. That mindset changed with the OnePlus 8 Pro as the company obtained an IP68 rating for the phone. But the OnePlus 8 starts at $699 which is the same price as the iPhone 11. The OnePlus 8 Pro starts at $899. No longer pricing its phones to kill other flagships, OnPlus needed to develop a lower-priced line which is where the OnePlus Nord comes in.

The OnePlus Nord is expected to support 5G and in fact, the Snapdragon 765/G chipset rumored to be powering the device has an integrated 5G modem. According to rumored specs, the phone could carry a 6.55-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 (FHD+) for an aspect ratio of 20:9. The display will refresh at 90Hz which updates the screen 90 times per second. An under-display fingerprint scanner is on board and we expect the handset to come with at least 128GB of storage. A triple-camera setup on the back might include 48MP wide and a 16MP ultra-wide cameras.

Earlier this month a phone said to be the OnePlus Nord went through the Geekbench benchmark test and practically confirmed that the Snapdragon 765/G will be the chipset running the show. More interesting was the 12GB of RAM that the unit tested was equipped with. Most likely this means that there will be different configurations of memory and storage for the OnePlus Nord. Earlier this year, a rumored price of 400 British Pounds was leaked. Absent another rumor, we might have to wait until July 10th to find out how much the OnePlus Nord will cost. The handset will be available in India, the U.K. and Europe.