OnePlus
More info
- Creator
- Pete Lau, Carl Pei
- Released
- 2013
- Type
- Phone maker
- Website
- oneplus.com
The phone brand that sold flagship specs at mid-range prices under the slogan "Never Settle" — and then quietly folded back into Oppo.
Pete Lau left a senior job at Oppo and set up OnePlus in Shenzhen in December 2013 with Carl Pei. The OnePlus One (2014) ran Cyanogen OS, a commercial offshoot of a popular Android custom ROM, and was sold by invitation only. The scarcity was part supply problem, part marketing, and it worked. Fans coined "flagship killer" and the name stuck.
The distance from Oppo was always shorter than it looked: same parent in BBK, same factories, same parts. In 2021 the two merged formally and OxygenOS was moved onto the same codebase as Oppo's ColorOS. By then Carl Pei had already left to start Nothing, working from much the same script.