The integration between Oppo and OnePlus is official and that may have spelt bad news for die-hard OnePlus fans. While we are yet to see what lies for OnePlus in the future, information from China suggests that Oppo is revamping its high-end smartphone lineup with this buyout. With OnePlus now part of Oppo, the latter is treating it more like a conventional high-end lineup going forward.
In plain English, that means that OnePlus is to Oppo what Samsung’s Galaxy S series phones are to Samsung. Or, what Huawei’s P series smartphones are to Huawei. A known tipster suggests that Oppo will now focus its Find series smartphones in a similar fashion to Huawei’s Mate series experimental devices, or Samsung’s Galaxy Z series devices.
OnePlus now a high-end Oppo flagship series
The leak, first spotted by GizmoChina, suggests that OnePlus flagships will be treated as a Oppo high-end product lineup. That means OnePlus phones will continue to offer the tried and tested features from Oppo’s arsenal. The Oppo Find X series will debut new technologies and concepts for the market.
While this hasn’t come from the official sources, the segmentation is certainly evident with this year’s lineup. The OnePlus 9 Pro is essentially a watered-down version of the Oppo Find X3 Pro sans the fancy cameras. Oppo’s flagship debuted a unique microscopic camera that’s unseen in any other smartphone so far.
Additionally, Oppo’s Rollable Concept also falls under the X series lineup. Going forward, Oppo could reserve the Find X series for more of such rollable and folding devices. This is more in line with the Samsung Galaxy Z series, which Samsung reserves for its foldables. The Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 3 are expected to be fine examples of the same.
However, it does contradict the official announcements. OnePlus clarified that it will continue to operate as a separate company and will continue to develop the OxygenOS experience. The integration will lead to OxygenOS and ColorOS sharing a common code base, which means both these platforms could share more features in the coming months.
The first signs of this integration are expected to be seen with the upcoming Android 12 skin on OnePlus and Oppo devices. OnePlus has talked about integrating a Theme Store in OxygenOS, which can now be ported from the ColorOS Android skin.
