OnePlus has made a rare appearance at CES 2022 to reveal the design of its upcoming flagship, the OnePlus 10 Pro, and announce that the phone will launch in China just next week.
The OnePlus 10 Pro will launch in China on Tuesday 11 January, though the company hasn’t yet confirmed when the phone will reach Europe, the US, India, or any other global markets.
It’s an unusual launch strategy for the company in several ways. For one, there’s no mention at all of the regular OnePlus 10 – only the Pro variant – which will likely further fuel speculation that OnePlus only plans to release one flagship this spring.
After launching three versions this time last year – the OnePlus 9, 9 Pro, and Asia-only 9R – releasing only a single phone for early 2022 looks like a distinct setback for the brand as it pushes for mainstream appeal, especially after skipping the expected 9T mid-cycle refresh last autumn.
The 10 Pro’s launch also comes earlier than expected – March or April would fit the company’s usual rhythms – while the decision to launch it first in China is a move straight out of the Oppo playbook.
OnePlus’s parent company moved to take more direct control of the brand last year, including merging R&D facilities and software platforms, and now it looks like release strategies have inevitably followed.
Alongside the launch date, OnePlus released a number of images of the upcoming flagship.
The 10 Pro phone can be seen in both black and dark green finishes, with an unusual wrap-around camera module – a look seemingly inspired by the contoured camera of Samsung’s Galaxy S21 series (and likely to be seen again in this year’s Galaxy S22), though here it wraps only around one side of the phone, rather than the whole corner.
It’s a design we’ve seen before, as it almost exactly matches renders in November 2021.
We can see that the 10 Pro boasts a triple camera module – the fourth circle is a flash – though for now, solid details about the camera specs will have to wait. Leaks so far point to a 48Mp primary sensor, a 50Mp ultra-wide lens, and an 8Mp telephoto lens with 3.3x zoom.
The new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset is the only officially confirmed spec so far, but the rumour mill also tells us to expect a 120Hz LTPO OLED display, a 5000mAh battery, and fast charging – potentially as much as 125W wired and 50W wireless.
In any case, with an official Chinese launch set for next week, we won’t have long to wait for the remaining details.
It may be a while after that before we hear about the phone’s global release, but with Mobile World Congress still on track to take place in Barcelona late next month, OnePlus may be planning to use the world’s biggest phone trade show to bring the 10 Pro to the rest of the world.
