For the second time this month, OnePlus has hinted that it is working on its first folding smartphone, which will be released later this year. OnePlus President and CEO Kinder Liu revealed that the company is working on a foldable phone, which will debut in the second half of the year, during a panel event on its stand at the MWC trade show in Barcelona.
Liu wouldn’t say much else, except that the phone will have premium specifications comparable to OnePlus’s best, the OnePlus 11, which was released earlier this month.
“Our first foldable phone will have the trademark OnePlus quick and smooth experience,” says OnePlus. In terms of industrial design, mechanical technology, and other elements, it must be a premium phone that does not settle because of its folding shape.
“We want to debut a product that aspires to be at the pinnacle of today’s foldable industry,” Liu said.
Still, it’s a little more specific than our previous tease, which arrived as a tag at the conclusion of the OnePlus 11’s India-only section earlier this year. The business then promised “something amazing” for Q3 – i.e. July to September – with a graphic approximating the corners of a folding phone, but the term “foldable” never appeared.
OnePlus has already stated that there will be no OnePlus 11 Pro or 11T this year, freeing the company’s calendar for high-end smartphones. That could imply that the future foldable will arrive in August, which has typically been filled by half-step update ‘T’ phones and neatly comes in the center of that wide Q3 timeframe.
OnePlus folding phone rumors have been circulating for years and increased after parent company Oppo revealed its Find N foldable, which has since been followed by the Find N2 and Find N2 Flip, the latter of which has just debuted in Europe and around the globe.
The forthcoming OnePlus device’s specifications are unknown, as is whether it will be a bigger book-style foldable or a clamshell split phone. In any case, it’s likely to resemble one of the two most recent Oppo phones, albeit with a few OnePlus tweaks thrown in for good measure.
This is OnePlus’s second statement of the show, following the unveiling of a concept phone based on its OnePlus 11 flagship. The OnePlus 11 Concept has a novel liquid cooling system, as well as a transparent rear design that makes the blue cooling pipes visible at all times.
