OnePlus confirms pricing and Nord branding for its new phone

Rumors of a new, lower-end OnePlus smartphone have been floating around for a while now, but there was a lot of speculation on what the name would be. First, it was going to be the OnePlus 8 Lite, then it was going to be the OnePlus Z, named as a successor to the only other mid-range smartphone that the company ever made, the OnePlus X. In fact, the firm even made a joke of the speculation by making an Instagram account called OnePlusLiteZThing.

But today, it's confirmed. The new device will be called the OnePlus Nord. It will be the first time that a OnePlus device wasn't named after a number or a letter.

OnePlus also confirmed that the price of the Nord will be under $500. That likely means that it will be $499, since if it was $399, the company surely would have said that it's under $400. Still, that price is a substantial bit lower than the OnePlus 8, which is $699.

The Shenzhen firm caught some attention this year when it introduced the OnePlus 8 series, with the Pro model coming in at a price point that rivaled other flagships; meanwhile, fans still remember the days of the 'Flagship Killer'. Back in the old days of the OnePlus One, that handset started at just $299 in a world where similarly-specced devices cost double that.

The OnePlus Nord is expected to arrive with a 6.55-inch 90Hz AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 765G chipset, 6GB RAM, 128GB of storage, a 4,300mAh battery that supports Warp Charge 30T, and a 64MP triple-lens camera. This will also be the first time that OnePlus has produced a smartphone without a Snapdragon 800 series chipset.