OPINION: OnePlus confirmed this week that there gained’t be a OnePlus 11 Professional or a OnePlus 11T later this 12 months in a bid to simplify its flagship smartphone providing – and I believe different firms ought to observe swimsuit.
The smartphone market is considerably extra complicated than it as soon as was, irrespective of if you happen to’re price range, mid-range or flagship telephones.
Whereas firms would as soon as upon a time launch a single all-encompassing flagship smartphone – like Apple and the iPhone 5 – the trendy flagship providing isn’t fairly as easy. Apple’s newest line-up contains the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Professional and iPhone 14 Professional Max, every of which supply barely totally different specs at totally different value factors.
To be clear, it’s not simply a difficulty unique to Apple, it’s one thing that virtually each smartphone producer does in 2023.
There’s additionally the newer development of mid-year refreshes from firms like Xiaomi, Oppo, Samsung and others in a bid to maintain smartphones aggressive because the 12 months goes on and new rivals seem in the marketplace, however these are hardly ever something greater than a minor spec bump.
Some would possibly argue that extra alternative is nice for the buyer, and I don’t disagree, however there’s a distinction between alternative and easily flooding the market with totally different variations of a smartphone in a bid to make as many gross sales as doable.
Actually, I believe that the trendy scattergun method to flagship smartphone releases might be complicated for shoppers, and it forces them to decide on what they need most quite than getting an ideal all-rounder.
Let’s use the present iPhone vary for example. The iPhone 14 is the fundamental flagship iPhone, the iPhone 14 Plus is just like the bottom mannequin however with a bigger display and a bump to battery life. The iPhone 14 Professional gives higher show and digital camera specs with a small type issue and the iPhone 14 Professional Max gives that very same premium expertise with a bigger show.
To the common shopper who doesn’t observe the most recent smartphone developments, that may be an awesome alternative. They know they need the most recent iPhone, however that’s about it.
Wouldn’t or not it’s simpler if there was only one flagship iPhone that mixed all the most effective expertise from Apple? It takes the confusion out of the method and offers the buyer the most effective total expertise, quite than prioritising particular options like digital camera or battery life at the price of others.
It may also have the knock-on impact of stopping the runaway prices of top-end smartphones just like the £1199/$1099 iPhone 14 Professional Max and £1249/$1199 Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely. Firms can preserve rising the top-end value as a result of they produce other variants of the flagship at cheaper costs, but when there was solely a single smartphone, it’d must be competitively priced to cease potential prospects from going elsewhere.
That is precisely what OnePlus completed with the OnePlus 11, which I extremely praised and gave a 4.5-star ranking with the Trusted Opinions Advisable award in my evaluation. It’s professional in all however title with top-level specs, a premium design and most significantly, a really aggressive price ticket. It’s simply one of many go-to Android suggestions for 2023.
The simplification additionally permits OnePlus to release the sources that might often push out Professional fashions and mid-year cellphone updates and to focus its efforts on different fascinating initiatives just like the OnePlus Pad and the OnePlus mechanical keyboard.
Think about the probabilities for firms like Apple, Samsung, and Google in the event that they solely needed to give attention to growing a single smartphone annually (the Apple Automotive is likely to be much less of a pipe dream).
