OnePlus has confirmed the OnePlus 11 while announcing that its next flagship smartphone will rock the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — Qualcomm’s latest and greatest chipset that was unveiled earlier this week at the company’s Snapdragon Summit 2022 in Hawaii. The OnePlus 11 has been in the rumour mill for some time, and it was expected to use the next flagship Snapdragon chipset. However, today’s announcement puts an end to the speculation.
The name “OnePlus 11” has appeared officially for the first time in a teaser image of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that OnePlus dropped on the Chinese social networking website, Weibo. The translated text on the photo says: “OnePlus 11 is the first batch to be equipped with the second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, and the first mobile ray tracing open platform is launched.”
Essentially, the next big thing for OnePlus, as well as every other brand using Qualcomm’s new chipset, is ray tracing, which improves visuals of high-end graphics in games. Ray tracing has been available on gaming consoles and PCs but this is the first time Qualcomm has managed to bring it to smartphones with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. And since OEMs have the liberty to tweak the performance of the new chipset, we could see some interesting applications of the feature.
Joining OnePlus in offering flagship phones for the next year are brands such as Xiaomi, Motorola, Oppo, Vivo, iQOO, Realme, Nubia, Honor, Sony, and the Asus Republic of Gamers. Sure, OnePlus does not seem to be in the race to launch the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phone, but it is likely to introduce its flagship phone early next year. The race, however, is among Xiaomi, Motorola, Oppo, and iQOO. None has a launch date yet, though.
Coming back to OnePlus’ upcoming flagship phone, the OnePlus 11 is rumoured to pack a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with a QHD+ resolution and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. The camera system on the phone may include a 50-megapixel main sensor, a 48-megapixel ultrawide sensor, and a 32-megapixel telephoto sensor. There could be a 32-megapixel selfie camera on the OnePlus 11. You may get up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage on the OnePlus 11, and it may use the Android 13-based OxygenOS 13 software. A 5000mAh battery may power the phone and it may support 100W fast charging.
While the OnePlus teaser does not confirm any of these specifications but the processor, we are likely to find out more official information about the OnePlus 11 in the coming days.