OnePlus Is Setting Up Shop In Australia
OnePlus might act big, but, in truth, it's a small fish swimming with whales and shark, a startup playing in giants' court. Rather than be a mark against it, it actually speaks to the company's ambition and capabilities that it is actually able to compete with the likes of Samsung, Huawei, and more as much as it does. That said, it's official availability in markets is still very limited. Case in point: it is only this month that it will take the steps to officially setup a presence in the land down under.
While it's always possible to acquire a OnePlus phone through various means, OnePlus officially only ships to 33 countries. That's an exclusive club that includes Austria, Belgium (Nederlands), Bulgaria, Canada (Français), Croatia, Cyprus (ελληνικά), Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg (Deutsch), Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK, and US.
Later this month, co-founder Carl Pei revealed that OnePlus will be starting a soft launch in Australia. In addition to testing market reception, it will also be testing its capabilities to supply the new demand. That, however, doesn't mean that OnePlus will really establish a presence in the country. In September, it will be gathering feedback to see how well they've done. Launching products, sadly, has never been smooth sailing for OnePlus.
When OnePlus does launch there, soft or hard, Australians might enjoy a better phone than what early birds got when the OnePlus 5 first launched. In the two months since it went on sale, OnePlus has had a somewhat rocky journey, causing it to push a lot of updates that, among other things, fix a critical 911 VoLTE bug and ad nagging surveys. Its latest update, however, has mostly been on the positive side of things, enabling EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) even for 4K video recording.
Whether OnePlus' Australian launch will coincide with its new color (or, in this case, colour) launch is yet to be seen. The startup recently teased a new color coming soon, but left it to the public's imaginations as to which color that would be. It would almost be fitting if OnePlus' new colors adopted one of Australia's national colors, which includes green and gold.