Yet another Chinese smartphone OnePlus One debuts in India

Chinese smartphone makers are rapidly realising the potential of the Indian market, as OnePlus prepares to follow Xiaomi, Oppo and several others into the country with its smartphone OnePlus One.

Initially the Chinese company is offering the One smartphone on an invitation-only basis in India.

The company has started in India with a Facebook name OnePlus India and has poisted the picture of OnePlus One as the header image.

 The OnePlus One was announced in April this year by the Chinese startup venture OnePlus, which was launched in December 2013 by Pete Lau, previously vice president at OPPO Electronics.

This One from OnePlus sports a Snapdragon 801 processor like the LG G3, HTC One M8, Sony Xperia Z2, Samsung Galaxy S5, Oppo Find 7a, Xiaomi Mi4 and ZTE Nubia Z7 Max.

Recently China's Xiaomi tasted success in India with the first launch phase of the Mi 3 and this seems to have prompted other big Chinese smartphone brands into considering the Indian market.

Among its features, OP One sports a big 5.5-inch LTPS IPS display with 1080x1920 pixel resolution offering a pixel density of 401ppi. The display also boasts of Gorilla Glass 3 protection and the same adaptive backlight technology that's seen in some Sharp displays.

The device has the distinction of being among the few to have 3GB RAM. OP One is powered by the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 clocked at 2.5GHz with Adreno 330 GPU.

It sports a 13-megapixel rear IMX214 sensor with a six-lens array and f/2.0 aperture that offers quick shutter speed of only 0.3-seconds. There's also a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

The phone does not have a microSD card slot, so you have to make do with the 16 or 64 GB onboard storage.

OnePlus One phone comes with a customised version of CyanogenMod ROM called CM 11S. The software is based on Android 4.4 KitKat. Connectivity is 4G LTE (region dependent) and you get Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC functionality. There's a 3100mAh non-removable battery too.

In other countries OnePlus One (OP One) is available at a starting price of $299 (unlocked and without contract) for the 16GB model (about Rs18,000), and the 64GB variant is priced at $349 (around Rs21,500).

According to commentators, the One definitely held an edge over the the Mi 3, which is currently the flavour of the season, with its faster speed, more power-efficient Snapdragon 801 system on chip.

While the specs and the potential are attractive what remains to be seen is what kind of a launch OnePlus would make in India.

Commentators doubt whether the fledgling company could scale up its production of phones for a big market like India as it would need to have considerable units on sale to have any impact at all.