OnePlus One smartphone available without invite
NEW YORK—Chinese startup OnePlus's first smartphone, the OnePlus One, made waves last year by offering powerful specs at an affordable price. While this excited many, OnePlus' decision to use an invite system left many peeved as it limited those who could buy the phone.
On Monday the company is changing those plans, allowing anyone to purchase the phone from the company's website whenever they wish.
Both the 16GB and 64GB versions of the phone will be available without invites. The devices will also still be running a version of Android customized by the startup Cyanogen, not OnePlus's own new Android-based OxygenOS.
The OnePlus One starts at $299 unlocked for the 16GB version ($349 for the 64GB model) and includes many of the same specs found on pricier devices from Samsung, LG and HTC. The current phone features a 5.5-inch full HD display, 13-megapixel rear camera with a 5-megapixel front sensor as well as a speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 3GB of RAM.
Since releasing the phone last April the company has sold over one million devices. It wasn't a completely seamless first year however, as the company employed an invite-only system that limited buyers to those who had received an invite from the company directly or from someone who had already purchased the device. This process was designed to help control manufacturing costs for the startup but left plenty of perspective buyers unhappy.
In February OnePlus began allowing for those without invites to purchase the OnePlus One on Tuesdays-- an invite would be required if you wished to purchase during the other six days of the week--but it wasn't until today that anyone could purchase the phone.
This isn't the end of the invite system entirely as OnePlus does plan to bring it back for its next device, the OnePlus 2, which the company says is coming in the third quarter of 2015. Not much is known about the OnePlus 2, but co-founder Carl Pei confirmed to USA TODAY that it would be running the company's OxygenOS as opposed to Cyanogen's software.
OnePlus hopes to sell between 3-5 million phones this year and Pei says the OnePlus 2 will adhere to the business model the company has applied to the OnePlus One, selling the phones at a lower cost with smaller margins to get people using the company's software.
Pei justifies the need for the invite system by citing the long wait times seen on products like Apple's upcoming Apple Watch. "We don't want users to wait a long time after a pre-order and we don't want users to rush to the website and find it sold out," Pei says, adding that the company prefers to simply send customers an email when they can guarantee a phone is in stock. "The process of acquiring an invite might be a little bit more tedious but once you have it you're 100% sure that something is going to be shipped to you very, very soon."
The invite system also allows for greater control of inventory and roll out of the new device, something that remains crucial for the startup. Pei says the idea of the invite system will be the same, though he promises that there will be some improvements to simplify the process.
The number of invites a buyer of the OnePlus 2 will have to share hasn't been decided. Original buyers of the OnePlus One were given three invites to distribute.
Not much else is known on the OnePlus 2, though the company isn't changing from its plan of offering a "flagship killer" at a cheaper price. There has been worry from the company's fans that the price may be as high as $650, the off-contract price for flagships like Samsung's Galaxy S6 and Apple's iPhone 6.
"If you look at how much it costs to make a phone, its nowhere near $650. And if you couple that with our model of not really making money on phones, I wouldn't come to the conclusion that its gonna cost that much," says Pei with a laugh.
As for the rumors of the company expanding into smartwatches, don't expect one anytime soon. OnePlus was working on a smartwatch project and was in the prototyping stage, but Pei confirms that they recently shelved those plans in order to focus on the new phone.
Follow Eli Blumenthal on Twitter@eliblumenthal