The OnePlus Nord is one of the most popular mid-range smartphones of recent years. It seems like there’s to come from OnePlus in the near future, which will be even more affordable.
The OnePlus Nord marked the company’s return to the affordable flagship space while still offering the hardware and software experience we’ve come to expect. Unsurprisingly, it was very well received. A new finding suggests that there’s more to come from OnePlus in the budget smartphone space.
The evidence of the next affordable OnePlus smartphone was unearthed by XDA Developers. Digging deeper into the latest Oxygen OS 10.5 build, references to a phone codenamed “Billie”. When cross-checked against the SM6350 chipset, which is the internal name of the Snapdragon 690 chipset, devices with the model numbers “BE2025”, “BE2026”, “BE2028”, and “BE2029” surfaced. These are likely to be the different variants of the same phone.
The OnePlus Nord, whose internal name was “Avicii”, had the model numbers “AC2001” and “AC2003”. Combining the two pieces of information, XDA suggests that “BE” could be a reference to Billie Eilish. Code within the OnePlus launcher APK reveals two devices in development—Billie2T and Billie8T. References to a product in the software only start showing up when it is towards the final stages of development.
This isn’t the first time we’re hearing of another OnePlus mid-ranger to be in the pipeline. Just days before the Nord’s launch, another smartphone with the Snapdragon 690 chipset was spotted on Geekbench. The Snapdragon 690 is the most affordable SoC from Qualcomm that supports 5G. Fabricated by Samsung, it is an 8nm processor with eight cores.
Carl Pei has also confirmed that “a OnePlus Nord smartphone” will be available in the U.S. later this year, adding more substance to the school of thought that Nord is not just one product but the start of an entire series. There’s no other information about this upcoming smartphone, but we expect to hear more about it as time passes by.
What do you think its final name will be?