OnePlus One available for pre-order for a limited time

Many of you have probably heard about the OnePlus One flagship, since it has become a quite popular device among Android enthusiasts this year. One of the main back-draws of the OnePlus One is that you can only get it by invite, meaning that you would need to get an invitation from someone who already has the phone. Many have criticized the invite system invoking that such a high quality and cheap phone should be widely available for the public to purchase.

Fact of the matter is that OnePlus is actually a startup company, and they have repeatedly hinted at the fact that they don’t yet have the ability to mass produce the OnePlus One flagship. The OnePlus One is a phablet sized smartphone with CyanogenMod 11 running on Android KitKat, and many people have praised the CyanogenMod ROM because of its customizability. The OnePlus One is such a desired phone because it packs flagships specs for half the price you would normally pay for a phone with those kinds of specs.

To be a bit clearer, the OnePlus One has a 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution display with 401 ppi, Snapdragon 801 quad-core Krait 2.5GHz backed by 3GB RAM and 16 or 64 GB internal storage, 3100 mAH battery but no microSD card slot. The OnePlus One sports a 13 MP. 4128*3096 pixel rear snapper with autofocus, dual-LED flash and features like touch focus, face detection, HDR and geotagging. It’s also capable of shooting video at 2160p@30fps, 2160p(DCI)@24fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@120fps, HDR and stereo sound recording. Its front cam is a 5 MP shooter (1080p@30fps), perfect for your selfie needs.

The most attractive part about the OnePlus One is that you can get the 16 GB version for $300 and the 64 GB version for $350. Insane price, correct? The OnePlus One rivals flagships like the Galaxy S5, HTC One M8, Sony Xperia Z2, Nokia Lumia 930, LG G3 and Motorola Moto X. Most of these handsets are well above the $500 price mark, so the OnePlus One seems like a great deal, except for the invite system which makes it quite the hassle to get your hands on the flagship.

Now here’s the good news. The OnePlus One will be available for pre-order at the end of October. That means everybody will have the opportunity to buy a OnePlus One without getting an invite first. OnePlus will be accepting an unlimited number of orders, but only one per person as we understood from the company’s blog post about the pre-order system. Too good to be true, right? Well, there is a catch. Pre-ordering the OnePlus One will only be available for a limited time only.

Nonetheless, you will still be able to buy the OnePlus One when pre-orders are opened at the end of October, along with accessories of your choice. What matters is that you catch that undisclosed time frame on OnePlus’ site. According to the company, the details of the pre-order system will be posted on their blog a week before they start accepting orders.

The company says that you will be able to place an order for the OnePlus One in the time limit specified by the company, and if they have the OnePlus One in stock, they will immediately ship it, if not, they will ship it as soon as it will be available. That means that you will still have to wait a considerable amount of time before you get your flagship at the door, but it’s still better than hoping to receive an invite.

“There’s a time limit, but no limit on the amount of orders that can be made. If we get a lot of pre-orders, we’ll simply show you a longer shipping estimation date. Any time after the pre-order time window closes, you’ll be able to forfeit your place in line, cancel the order, and release the payment reserve if you don’t wish to wait any longer. If you receive an invite while waiting for a pre-order to ship, you can apply it to skip the pre-order queue and have your order shipped immediately.” – Carl from OnePlus

While the pre-order system for the OnePlus One is not ideal, it still is a step forward for the company and proves that they have been improving and progressing and they will eventually grow into mass producing the flagship. There have been rumors of a second OnePlus device coming the following year, although what it will look like, how much it will cost or what kind of specs it will boast with have not yet been disclosed by the company.

Will you be among those who will be jumping at the opportunity and pre-ordering the OnePlus One at the end of October? I will certainly be one of them and if, by chance, I’ll be able to place two orders… I’ll get two. Just for the sake of it.