The OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro have been imagined in a new design from Jermaine Smit a.k.a. Concept Creator, made in association with LetsGoDigital.
The two phones mark a significant departure from the OnePlus 7T and OnePlus 7 Pro that were released last year. It's most visible on the front, where the waterdrop notch and pop-up selfie camera of the 7T and 7 Pro respectively have been replaced by a hole-punch in the top left corner.
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The display in which the camera is embedded is tipped to be a 120Hz refresh rate panel, matching the Samsung Galaxy S20 series and improving on the 90Hz displays used in the OnePlus 7 series and the Google Pixel 4. The display's left and right edges are still curved, something that Samsung has abandoned on the S20.
Along the sides we can see the familiar OnePlus arrangement of power and volume buttons, plus an alert slider switch, a feature not found on many Android phones, but one that certainly can be handy.
Within the phone, although we don't see any internal details in this concept, we're expecting to find a Snapdragon 865 CPU, either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128 or 256GB of storage depending on the model, 4,000 mAh or 4,500 mAh battery (with 30W wireless or wired charging), and 5G compatibility by default.
The two phones look a lot more like each other than previously OnePlus models. The OnePlus 7T's horizontally arranged circular camera bump is gone, replace by a vertically-stacked camera bump down the center. Having a unified design across the range makes a lot more sense than two very different looking phones with similar names, so OnePlus has done the smart thing here.
The cameras themselves will most likely be a main/ultra-wide/telephoto combination like we saw on the OnePlus 7 series, with the OnePlus 8 Pro getting a time-of-flight sensor too, at least according to various leaks, including one involving Robert Downey Jr.
We see a small handful of colors, including purple, blue and red. Previous OnePlus phones have tended to have more subtle color options, excluding the bright orange detailing on the special edition phones like the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren, but having some brighter options to go with the dark blues and silvers would be welcome.
All bets are off as to when OnePlus or any other tech company's launch events will happen due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, the most recent rumors say the reveal of the OnePlus 8 series will happen in mid-April, which is just about a month away.
