At Qualcomm's Snapdragon Tech Summit 2018 in Maui, Hawaii, the company announced that its new Snapdragon 855 chipset will power the 5G handsets that will be out in the market starting 2019. People initially thought that it's going to be Samsung's Galaxy S10 range first, but it seems that it's not the case as OnePlus has confirmed that it's going to manufacture a handset that's powered by the new Snapdragon 855.
OnePlus CEO Pete Lau was the first to confirm at the summit that the company will develop its next smartphone that will be packed with the more powerful Snapdragon 855. He did not mention the name of the next handset, but Tech Radar assumed it's going to be OnePlus 7 considering how the Chinese/Swedish smartphone manufacturer names its devices - from OnePlus One to OnePlus 6T.
As for the new smartphone's release, the company usually releases new devices every six months. The OnePlus 6T hit the store shelves in October 2018, so OnePlus 7 might just be released in April 2019 considering the timeline.
The tech giant though did not disclose any more details about its upcoming Snapdragon 855-powered smartphone, but the launch might also happen earlier, especially that the CEO has confirmed its development. It is very possible that the people behind it are already working on the smartphone considering that the company already announced it.
Further, Lau also confirmed that OnePlus will be the first smartphone manufacturer to release 5G handsets in Europe in partnership with EE in the United Kingdom. With that being said, it's likely that this will be the OnePlus 7 (if it's going to be the next phone's name) to flatter with the Snapdragon 855 chipset.
Many analysts expected that Samsung will be the first to release the new chipset handsets in 2019, especially that the Galaxy S10 range will reportedly hit the marketplace in February 2019 during the Mobile World Congress (MWC). But with OnePlus CEO's confirmation, it's possible that the OnePlus 7 with Snapdragon 855 will hit the store shelves first before the Galaxy S10.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 promises faster and more accurate unlocking with its ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. It will also support multi-gigabit 5G handsets and its 4th-gen multi-core AI (Artificial Intelligence) engine is 3x faster and more powerful than the Snapdragon 845.
Qualcomm senior vice president and general manager for mobile Alex Katouzian also announced that the new chipset will be the first in the world to warrant computational photography and video capture features. So it's possible that OnePlus will compete with other tech heavyweights in developing more powerful smartphones next year.
