The beautiful device which you see pictured above this text is the OnePlus One. The company is made of a few people who used to work for Oppo, you can probably tell given the similarities between this device and the Find 5. But, looks aside the OnePlus One is a powerhouse with the Snapdragon 801, Full HD 1080p 5.5" screen, 3GB of RAM, 16 or 64GB of internal storage and a 3100mAh which should last you pretty well.
The best thing about the phone though is the price. £229 for a 16GB version or £269 for the 64GB variant which simply blows everything out of the water in terms of price to performance ratio, especially when you consider that the device will be kept up to date by the guys over at CyanogenMod, this thing becomes a very interesting beast for people who like to buy their phones sim free.
So what's the catch? Well seemingly nothing with regards to the phone, the problem though is that it's nothing short of a lottery to get hold of one! We know the problems that some companies (I'm looking at you Google) have when they try to launch a new device and people can't wait to get their hands on the shiny new toy as soon as possible. To alleviate this issue OnePlus have decided that they will release a very limited stock onto the market and then from there you will be able to get hold of a phone by invite only.
On the surface this is a good way of managing demand while the early production issues, which there will inevitably be with a new company and new device, get ironed out. But, where does that leave the consumers, the people who actually want to buy this phone. Well, in a bit of a predicament. Why would someone who wants a new phone try desperately to get hold of this phone by bribing someone for an invite or smashing their old phone when they can just walk into the nearest Carphone Warehouse or navigate their browser straight from here to Google Play or Amazon to pick up the Nexus 5 or any other device they want?
Yes, the price is the only reason why you would wait for this phone. The problem for OnePlus is how quickly they can go from these 100 phone smashing incidents to taking the money from everyone who wants to carry one of the 'Ones' in their pockets. If they take a few months something better will come out, but they have a couple of months to scale things up and if they can do it fast enough, then they'll stand some sort of chance of having a successful product.
I think the phrase to finish this off with should be slightly ominous, so I suppose 'time will tell'.
