One of the longest jokes in the smartphone industry are that when Oppo releases a new phone, OnePlus will launch something similar a few months later. But now the two companies are working with Realme to make that kind of collaboration official by merging parts of their research and development.
In a statement issued to Android Authority, a spokesperson for OnePlus, said: “To better maximize resources and further position OnePlus for growth, we are further integrating further R & D capabilities into OPLUS, our long-term investor. OnePlus will continue to be independent work and work to deliver the best possible user experience for existing and future OnePlus users. ”
For people in the west who may not be super familiar with OPlus, OPlus is a holding company that oversees OnePlus, Oppo, and Realme and is led in part by OnePlus co-founder Pete Lau, who joined OPlus last fall as senior vice president to promote synergy between the three brands.
Oppo, OnePlus, Realme are expected to maintain some independence in the three companies, but this statement only confirms that emerging devices from OPlus members will include a wider range of shared features and designs, which include a trend that has been growing for some time with recent phones like OnePlus’s Nord N100 with almost identical specifications as Oppo’s A53s.
However, you should still expect the brands to maintain certain differences like their Android sheets, with OnePlus probably to maintain its Oxygen OS skin for Android, while Oppo continues to develop its own ColorOS.
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It said the biggest impact of this development could be for things like camera performance and image processing, where a greater amount of resources and investment can help members of OPlus better keep up with technology giants like Apple, Google and Samsung. AAfter reviewing the OnePlus 8T last fall, I realized that although the device itself was a good value and a decent phone, it still felt OnePlus still needed higher if it wants to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive market.
And with OnePlus advancing when it comes to entering transportation companies in the US (where the vast majority of people in the US buy their phones), it makes some sense for OPlus to continue OnePlus as a phone brand more towards the western market.
But maybe an ever-larger take away from all this is that OnePlus, while OnePlus may have started designing cell phones to please hardcore smartphone enthusiasts, is long gone, but the days of OnePlus that look like the hard phone startup we knew in 2013.