OnePlus 3 UK price hike starts July 11, OTA put on hold
Things don't seem to be looking good for OnePlus, both in the UK and everywhere else. As it had earlier predicted, the economic repercussions from the "Brexit" vote will have an impact in the price of its new OnePlus 3 flagship. That is indeed the case and the company is confirming that starting July 11, those putting in an order for the OnePlus 3 will be facing a higher 329 GBP price tag than early birds who already bought or pre-ordered the smartphone.
It isn't a case of making a political statement but simply a fact that since Brexit, the British pound has been at a steady decline against the US dollar. Businesses are already worrying about the long-term effects of this trend, but it is already affecting smaller businesses, like OnePlus'. The startup says that it is reluctant to make such a negative price change so early in the OnePlus 3's launch, but its "extremely thin margins" leave it little choice.
So starting 11th July, the OnePlus 3 will cost 329 GBP instead of the old 309 GBP. To be fair to OnePlus, it did give a rather long heads up about the possible price hike. And it is also giving buyers a few days to grab the device at its original price. OnePlus says it is willing to take the financial hit for those in the coming days.
Sadly, its woes don't end there. The OTA that was supposed to save it face is suddenly being halted. The Oxygen OS 3.2.0 update brought with it, among other things, the new sRGB option in developer mode and better RAM management. However, OnePlus announced that it was temporarily stopping the rollout out due to reported issues while upgrading. It doesn't give more detail than that, but concerned OnePlus 3 owners might already know one cause.
Apparently, whenever the OnePlus 3 tries to check for updates, it sends the device's unique IMEI number to OnePlus' servers. As if that weren't bad enough, it does so over plain, unencrypted HTTP, leaving it ripe for the picking for any hacker on the same network (like public Wi-Fi). That said, OnePlus isn't confirming if this is indeed the issue it hinted at, but it's pretty good timing that the rollout was stopped at this point.