OnePlus One to get a taste of nature on July 22

Even while its smartphone is still a no-show in markets everywhere, OnePlus is already teasing the public about the things that it still can't get their hands on. With a simple "Knock on wood" phrase carved into a wooden background, OnePlus is teasing what could be the arrival of wood back covers for the smartphone on 22 July.

Since launch day and even before that, OnePlus already made it known that the OnePlus One will have options for customized and personalized back covers. It seems that the Chinese startup is taking a page from Motorola's book, after seeing how the Moto Maker service helped catapult the manufacturer back into popularity. But in true ambitious OnePlus fashion, it wasn't going to settle for just wooden backs. There was also talk of denim, silk, sandstone, and even kevlar.

Of course, OnePlus isn't Motorola and there are two glaring differences between the two customization options. For one, OnePlus doesn't have a Moto Maker system in place, or at least not yet. It is quite inconceivable how the company will handle such options without anything like Moto Maker, unless it were to manufacture and sell such covers en masse. But more importantly, the Moto X already exists in the market. The OnePlus does not. So while the company continues to tease such options, it will only leave the rest of the world drooling at first and frustrated in the long run.

Why? Because the OnePlus One, for Android enthusiats, is a tempting and juicy bait that OnePlus keeps dangling in front of us. The 5.5-inch 1080p display, fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 and 3 GB of RAM are quite topnotch, the custom CyanogenMod 11S is the closest you'd get to vanilla Android on an OEM product, and the $299 price tag for a 16 GB model, $349 for 64 GB, isto die for.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world outside OnePlus' exclusive fan club, the OnePlus One remains out of reach. We will be knocking on wood that the company will have some favorable news on July 22 more than just back covers we can't use yet anyway.

SOURCE: @OnePlus