Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus on Tuesday officially launched a new Soft Gold limited edition variant of its premium flagship smartphone, OnePlus 5 in the Indian tech market at a price tag of Rs. 32,999. If you don’t remember, the OnePlus 5 with 6GB RAM/64GB inbuilt storage variant was first launched in India in the month of June this year only in Slate Grey colour option. With the new Soft Gold shade, the OnePlus 5 will now be available for purchase in two attractive body colour options including Soft Gold and Slate Grey colour options. Carried a such an attractive price tag, the new OnePlus 5 Soft Gold Limited Edition will be made available for purchase in India starting August 9 (Wednesday) at 12:00 AM IST via e-commerce website Amazon India as well as company’s online retail store oneplusstore.in. If you are planning to buy this Soft Gold avatar, then you keep yourself ready to grab the rush sale because the company says that the OnePlus 5 Soft Gold is a limited edition model. The new OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant will also be available from OnePlus Experience stores in Bangalore, Select Citywalk in New Delhi and DLF Mall of India in Noida, while supplies last.
Talking about its paint job, the OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant uses advanced sandblasting process, which the company claims that the finish of the Soft Gold OnePlus 5 is 30 percent finer than that of previous OnePlus Soft Gold devices. The new OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant packs the perfect mix of glass and metal design, premium build quality, style, and luxuriousness which are all associated with the OnePlus brand. Apart from its paint job, the rest specifications and features are same to same as we have seen on the other existing OnePlus 5 variants.
Commenting on the new launch, Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India, said, “As a maker of the most beautifully designed smartphones, it gives us immense joy to introduce the latest OnePlus 5 with even more refined and elegant Soft Gold finish this festival season. The latest OnePlus 5 Soft Gold will appeal to those who are looking for the perfect balance of beautiful design and powerful features.”
“It takes an average of 180 days to create and perfect a coating of Soft Gold. Getting a perfectly even and light colour starts with running premium aluminium alloy through a diamond cutter. The surface is then sandblasted and polished with intense precision. Each second matters in this process or the anodized colour takes on a different shade. It’s an extensive process, but the result is worth it – a stunning matte finish is pleasing to see and feel,” the company further added in its press release.
Besides this, the company also announced that the top-end variant of OnePlus 5 with 8GB RAM/128GB inbuilt storage will now be made available in Slate Gray colour option as well. With the new Slate Gray hue, the OnePlus 5 with 8GB RAM/128GB inbuilt storage will now be available for purchase in two attractive body colour options including Slate Gray and Midnight Black colour options. Priced at Rs. 37,999, the OnePlus 5 with 8GB RAM/128GB ROM Slate Gray variant will be made available for purchase in India via e-commerce website Amazon.in, OnePlus online store and across OnePlus Experience stores in Bengaluru and in Delhi, in the upcoming weeks.
Let’s take a look at the OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant’s design, specifications and features:
OnePlus 5 design:
In terms of design, the OnePlus 5 sports a sleek Anodised Aluminium chassis with a Horizon Line all around, making it a “slimmest OnePlus flagship yet”. “The new crescent-shaped antenna blends seamlessly into the top and bottom edges of the phone to maintain an elegant, minimalist look,” the company says. Basically, the OnePlus 5 looks very identical to the Apple iPhone 7 Plus with respect to design, including the horizontal rear-side dual camera arrangement. The new OnePlus 5 also features hardware capacitive buttons (with the option of onscreen navigation) and a front-mounted fingerprint scanner, that is housed underneath the physical Home Button of the device. The company claims that the fingerprint sensor can able to unlock the smartphone in just 0.2 seconds. The volume rockers are placed on the left-hand edge along with OnePlus toggle switch (Alert Slider) for different modes, while the power/lock button and SIM-tray are situated on the right-hand edge of the smartphone. The speaker grilles, mic, a 3.5mm audio socket and a USB Type-C charging port are all housed at the very bottom edge of the smartphones.
OnePlus 5 Soft Gold Specifications and Features:
In terms of specifications, OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant comes equipped with a 5.5-inch full-HD Optic AMOLED display with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and a scratch resistance 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 5 coating on top. Under the hood, the device is powered by a latest 64-bit 2.45GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor coupled with Adreno 540 image processing unit to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant is backed by a 6GB of RAM and 64 of internal storage, which can’t be further expanded due to the absence of microSD card slot. Talking about its software fronts, the dual-SIM (Nano-SIM) OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant runs company’s proprietary OxygenOS custom UI skin, based on Google’s latest Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system. The latest OxygenOS version introduces notable changes to the OS (operating system) and its development platform. So all the latest features of the OS are present in the device such as Reading Mode, Expanded Screenshots, Auto Night Mode, Secure Box, and Gaming Do Not Disturb Mode. The smartphone also supports Paytm Quick Pay.
In terms of optics, the OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant sports a dual rear camera setup that comes combined with two Sony sensors along with an LED flash module. Among these two cameras, the main camera sports a 16-megapixel Sony IMX398 sensor with a large f/1.7 aperture and 1.12-micron pixels, while another camera comes with a 20-megapixel telephoto lens with Sony IMX350 sensor, 1-micron pixels) and an f/2.6 aperture. The rear camera features include 2X lossless Zoom, 8X digital Zoom, fast AF (autofocus), Portrait Mode, Pro mode with manual control, Face Detection, RAW format support, histogram and 4K video recording with EIS, ISO, white balance, shutter-speed, etc. On the front, OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant features a 16-megapixel front-facing shooter with an f/2.0 aperture and 1-micron pixel Sony IMX371 sensor. Selfie camera features include auto HDR mode, screen flash and full HD 1080p video recording support.
In terms of Connectivity, the OnePlus 5 Soft Gold variant supports dual-SIM dual standby using the (nano-SIM + nano-SIM) slot. Connectivity options on the smartphone also include 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with MIMO, NFC, GPS/A-GPS/Glonass, BeiDou, a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB 2.0 Type-C port for superfast charging and data transfer. On the battery front, the Soft Gold variant comes packed with a decent 3,300mAh non-removable battery with company’s Dash Charge technology support for fast-charging. The Dash Charge technology can charge the phone up to 60 per cent in just 30 minutes. Sensors on the device include a Proximity sensor, E-Compass, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Ambient light sensor and Fingerprint (front-mounted) sensor. Dimensionally, the handset measures 154.2 x 74.1 x 7.25mm and weighs just 153 grams.
