Five years since the launch of the OnePlus One in India, the market represents the largest growth opportunity for the Shenzhen, China company. OnePlus is now the largest premium-segment smartphone player in India and has been instrumental in creating the “affordable flagship” category.
It only makes sense that the company starts looking at creating products that are closely aligned with the demands of its largest user base. At an event in Hyderabad, OnePlus opened up its new R&D facility. With a promised 140 million investment planned out, this will be the company’s biggest research center. Android Authority sat down with Szymon Kopeć, Product Lead at OnePlus. Excerpts follow
“2019 has been a transformative year for OnePlus. As the company is starting to look at a more premium audience with the OnePlus 7 Pro, it has also started diversifying by offering a services layer on top of the core OxygenOS experience. India has been leading development on this front and Zen Mode, a software profile that pushes you to step away from your phone, was born here.”
“As OnePlus looks at India as the next home-base instead of just another market, you can expect to see more services catering to an Indian audience, albeit with a global appeal. Case in point, live-updated cricket scores on the Shelf. While that specific sport might not be of great importance to say, a North American market, it is easy to see it being adapted for local markets. In fact, we should be seeing a number of new services before the year is over.
Kopeć mentioned that the company is aiming to launch a low-cost worldwide data roaming service. This, in addition to a text message manager app that will segregate and sort out incoming texts from your bank, coupons etc., while weeding out spam. Kopeć mentioned that India will primarily be looking at the application and services layer, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t expect broader changes in the OnePlus experience.The Indian R&D center in Hyderabad is getting its own camera testing lab. The team in India has been working with their Taiwanese counterparts to provide local feedback, however the Indian lab will have greater autonomy in tweaking the camera tuning. OnePlus is also investing in hiring engineers proficient in augmented reality, a feature it thinks will be increasingly relevant in the next few years.
Localized camera tunings can be a double-edged sword. While markets like India, have a preference for skin smoothing filters and a more contrast-rich image, this might not be the case around the world. Kopeć reaffirmed that while any tweaks made will apply to the global build, changes will be made keeping in mind the global appeal of OnePlus hardware. “No, OnePlus does not plan to have a beauty filter switched on by default.”
