OnePlus One Revealed: a CyanogenMod Smartphone 196
An anonymous reader writes "Spec-wise, OnePlus One will go toe-to-toe with the latest flagship phones like the Galaxy S5, HTC One (M8), and Sony Xperia Z2. In some areas, it even surpasses them, and at a price point of $300. The One has the same 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AC SoC as the Samsung Galaxy S5, build quality similar to the HTC One (M8), and the large 3000+ mAh battery and Sony camera of the Xperia Z2. It also runs CyanogenMod 11S, which is based on Android 4.4."
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:4, Informative)
It's being sold direct by the Chinese manufacturer:
OnePlus
Unit B 9/F. Lockhart Centre
301-307 Lockhart Road Wanchai
Hong Kong Central
Hong Kong
Cutting out markups by US retailers can only lower the final consumer price. Units will ship directly from China most likely, and most US consumers will be surprised when they receive bills from the shipper for US Customs clearance. It's unlikely they will be able to get away with checking the "Gift" box on the customs forms for 10 million phones.
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2, Informative)
It's being sold direct by the Chinese manufacturer:
OnePlus
Unit B 9/F. Lockhart Centre
301-307 Lockhart Road Wanchai
Hong Kong Central
Hong Kong
Cutting out markups by US retailers can only lower the final consumer price. Units will ship directly from China most likely, and most US consumers will be surprised when they receive bills from the shipper for US Customs clearance. It's unlikely they will be able to get away with checking the "Gift" box on the customs forms for 10 million phones.
I've bought plenty of merchandise from Chinese manufacturers ($1000+ per shipment) and never had to pay any unexpected customs charges, everything was paid in the shipping/handling fees.
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, no. While it's true that SD cards offer backwards compatibility with MMC, modern cards transfer using a 4 bit wide parallel bus, and it's not nearly as simple as the SPI mode. With regard to your argument, have you ever looked at the flash chips in an SD card? Last I checked, they use the same memory dies as the "embedded" packages, and add the cost of an SD controller and more complex packaging. On the host side, there's the cost of an SD controller (although that's probably "free" with the SoC) and socket.
More specific to the original point, if a phone already has 16G of flash, the cost of upping it to 64G is minor - the parallel interface you mention is already there, and the difference in packaging costs between 16G and 64G chips is likely zero.
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:5, Informative)