Oneus firms up the release details of its One uber-phone

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 30 Apr 2014

st week, Oneus announced the Oneus One, a $300 smartphone with a highly impressive design tech specs, but the company left out some key details on when it would be available for purchase.

The company has now clarified its release plans in a forum post on its website.

Oneus says it has prepared 100 phones for its “one Smash” contest, in which 100 winners can buy the phone for $1 if they also destroy their current phones. Oneus is still accepting entries for this contest through May 2, contestants only have to smash their phones if they win.

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After the contest is over, each winner will be able to invite three other people to purchase the Oneus One at the full price of $300 for the 16GB Silk ite version, or $350 for the 64GB Sstone Black version.

The first batch of 16GB phones will ship to invitees in mid- to late-May, while the first 64GB phones will ship in early ne.

Oneus says it will increase general availability later in ne, while an invitation will still be required, the company says “people who want it should be able to get an invite without much trouble.” It’s unclear when the Oneus One might be available without an invitation.

Oneus says it didn’t expect such heavy dem for the phone, didn’t anticipate that most people would prefer the 64GB model. “at we’ve done is dramatically increase the amount of 64GB Sstone Black models in our production plans, while producing 16GB Silk ite as long as they don’t delay the time to market for Sstone Black,” the company said.

The Oneus One has a 5.5-inch 1080p display, 2.5 Snapdragon 801 processor, 3 GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front camera a 3,100 mAh battery. In terms of tech specs, it goes toe-to-toe with flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 HTC One (M8), but will sell for less than half the price without a contract. The phone runs Android 4.4 with a custom build of CyanogenMod, allowing for plenty of customization.

It sounds like a great product, fared well in our early hs-on, but the powerful specs low price tag won’t amount to much if Oneus can’t meet dem. Hopefully the company can ramp up manufacturing drop the invite-based purchase process sooner than later.