October 17, 2018. The OnePlus 6T is now available at T-Mobile stores across the United States, the first time a OnePlus device is available through a major US carrier. The partnership is commercially significant and strategically revealing. T-Mobile gives OnePlus mainstream retail distribution in the world’s most lucrative smartphone market. It also gives T-Mobile’s product team leverage over OnePlus’s hardware decisions, which is how the 6T ships with a teardrop notch camera placement that the global community considers aesthetically inferior, and why the T-Mobile variant runs a modified OxygenOS build that T-Mobile approves before releasing to users.
The hardware itself is excellent. Snapdragon 845, shipped to OnePlus unusually early for a non-Samsung partner. In-display fingerprint sensor: the first commercially practical implementation, fast enough to use rather than just demonstrate. Glass back. 6.41-inch AMOLED notch display. 3700mAh battery with Warp Charge 30. $549 for the 6GB model. OxygenOS at this point is still recognizably the software the 3 community loved: fast, clean, updating quickly, responsive to community feedback on features.
The McLaren Edition and what it signals
Alongside the standard 6T, OnePlus has launched a McLaren Edition with 10GB of RAM and a papaya orange finish, priced at $699. This is the first time OnePlus has created a hardware SKU whose primary purpose is status signaling rather than specifications at value. The collaboration with McLaren is aesthetically coherent: the McLaren racing identity and OnePlus’s design language share a premium performance sensibility that works on a smartphone without feeling forced. But $699 from a brand that began as an argument against $699 flagship pricing is a statement about where OnePlus sees itself in the market.
I want to be honest about something. Watching the 6 and 6T era from inside the OnePlus community in Europe, the price increases do not feel alarming in real time the way they may look in retrospect. Each increment is justified by genuine hardware improvements. The Snapdragon 845 is worth more than the 801. The in-display fingerprint sensor is worth something. The glass premium material is meaningful. It is only when you lay the full price timeline out ($299 to $549 in four years) that the trajectory becomes undeniable. Whether that trajectory ends somewhere that still makes sense for the brand, or whether it keeps moving until the brand’s identity contradicts the price, is the question I am watching without a clear answer yet.
Part of OnePlus: The Complete Story, my full history of OnePlus from founding to the Realme merger.