OnePlus has quite the range of premium flagships under its belt, including the impressive OnePlus 8 Pro that won the T3 award for best phone and best gadget of 2020.
It's shaken things up recently with its back-to-basics OnePlus Nord that balanced a few really good specs with a wallet-friendly price, and the company is reported to have more affordable phones on the way with the OnePlus Aurora and OnePlus Lemonade; but it doesn't stop there, with rumours that the Chinese tech giant is scrapping one of its smartphone lines altogether.
Twitter leaker Max J. posted the tweet above, alluding to the cancellation of the OnePlus 8T Pro. For those of who you don't keep up with the plethora of smartphone codenames, 'Kebab' refers to the OnePlus 8T, while 'Kebab2' references the Pro variant.
The 'T' iteration of smartphones usually offers improvements on the numbered versions, like the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7T, but last year's OnePlus 7T Pro didn't offer a large enough upgrade to make it worth the extra cash you'd have to splash out on it compared to the vanilla version; the differences were pretty much negligible.
OnePlus has carved out a place for itself in the Android market, and its smartphones' quality are often on a par with more expensive brands but for a significantly lower price.
Now that it's launching a line of affordable smartphones, starting with the Nord, the company may be choosing to streamline its more premium offerings to sit alongside its dedicated, cheaper line of handsets. If that's the case, it won't need to muddy the waters and confuse consumers with Pros, Ts, and T Pros anymore.
The OnePlus 8T is reportedly making its debut at the end of the month, and given that OnePlus likes to keep its community up to speed with internal goings-on, we may hear more on all of this at the device's launch.
Good article