

We tend to not cover OnePlus here at Ausdroid too often, as we feel that OnePlus ignore Australians by refusing to sell directly to us. The fact of the matter is, though, many of you own OnePlus phones. Last year’s second flagship, the OnePlus 3T is still considered by many experts to be the fastest phone around which has whet our appetite for this year’s flagship, the OnePlus 5.

The OnePlus 5 has leaked overnight on two reselling websites, Geekbuying and Gearbest, and while they look legit there may be parts of it that do not seem correct. Whether the sites have just put the device up based on rumoured specs is unknown but the specs they have listed are impressive indeed.

The phone will be sporting a 5.5in 2K display powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and a whopping 8GB of RAM. There is a 16MP front facing camera and dual 23MP rear facing cameras. The battery which will most likely support their proprietary quick charge, Dash Charge, is 4000mAh, powering Android 7.1 in the form of OxygenOS which I liken to a custom ROM done right.

The spec that seems suspicious is the onboard storage. OnePlus have rarely strayed far from Google’s ideal for Android and as such have tended to avoid microSD cards. Both sites have the OnePlus 5 listed as having a microSD slot. Another spec that doesn’t seem right is the 64GB of onboard storage. Last year’s OnePlus 3T arrived in a 64GB and a 128GB version so for OnePlus to go backwards and only offer 64GB does not sit right with me. Being suspicious of these specs makes me suspicious of all of them. It seems very much like a rumourmill round up and what everyone/someone wants in a phone — except for the part whey have excluded the headphone jack.

The bad news for Australians is that once again Band 28 (700mHz) LTE is not supported so your coverage inside buildings may suffer. We have heard from many of our readers, including one previous writer that they have not noticed any drop-off in signal at all inside building with the lack of Band 28 in their phone.

The price for the phone is a strange one with Gearbest listing it at $916.99AU which seems steep for OnePlus and Geekbuying listing it for $606.99AU, both with free shipping. At this stage it seems it is only available in black.

If the above specs are indeed correct (and my spidey senses tell me some of them may not be) that is one hell of a package for a tick over $600. I am very interested in purchasing if they are correct, now if only OnePlus wanted to sell me one.