OnePlus rumored to launch one of the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-based phones

Could it be the OnePlus 11 Pro?

The OnePlus 10T debuted just one month ago with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and lightning-fast charging, but you know what also moves as fast as lightning? The company’s smartphone release cycle. The OnePlus 10 Pro isn’t just one of the best smartphones of 2022, it was also one of the first, launching in China back in January, before phones like the Samsung Galaxy S22 were even announced. Now there’s a chance that OnePlus may be interested in getting started even earlier for the 11 series, and a new rumor suggests it might be planning to launch a phone running some next-gen silicon before the year’s out.

This theory comes from Digital chat station posting on Weibo, where the tipster talks a little about a new device OnePlus is supposedly working on (via Android Authority). He claims it would run an SM8550 SoC, which is expected to be Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, due to be introduced at its next Snapdragon Summit in November (the existing Gen 1 chips are the SM8450 and SM8475). By virtue of it running the next Snapdragon flagship chip, and knowing OnePlus, it sounds reasonable that this could be a device belonging to the OnePlus 11 series — maybe the OnePlus 11 Pro if the upcoming lineup is anything like the current one (as we didn’t get any vanilla OnePlus 10).

Notably, the tipster also mentions that it’s expected “at the end of the year,” suggesting that it could be unveiled barely a month after Qualcomm goes official with its chip news. That would be incredibly fast for a phone running this silicon to actually be released, but considering we were getting teasers of 8+ Gen 1 handsets the same day that hardware was announced, perhaps we’re looking at an announcement that would significantly precede retail availability. For the moment, we really haven’t heard much of anything else about this potential phone, so hopefully additional leaks and rumors over the next few months can start fleshing out that picture for us.

Could OnePlus end up doing something like it did with the 10 Pro, where we see a China-exclusive release for a few months ahead of broader availability? For now, only one thing is certain — expectations are high.