OnePlus One
The OnePlus One smartphone OnePlus

In the past couple of weeks, the successor to the “2015 flagship killer” OnePlus 2 has already been subject to numerous leaks, rumours and speculations.

Last week, online images of the purported retail box for the upcoming OnePlus 3 smartphone hinted that the much anticipated device may arrive as early as May 18. Following the trend of the first generation of OnePlus, earlier it was believed that the OnePlus 3 release date could fall in June.

However, the Chinese smartphone maker has not yet announced the official OnePlus 3 release date. The OnePlus 2 made its debut in August in 2015.

As reported by GizmoChina, the design of the rumoured OnePlus 3 may closely resemble HTC’s flagship M7. Leaked images of the alleged OnePlus 3 show 3.5mm headphone jack and USB Type-C ports. The smartphone is said to tout a fingerprint scanner embedded on its home button.

Other speculations also indicate that the OnePlus 3 price will be less than its predecessor.

The upcoming OnePlus 3 is slated to arrive in two variants with a base price of 1999 yuan (AU$450). The low-end model will reportedly feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 SoC, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of in-built storage.

The "2015 flagship killer” OnePlus 2 price started at US$349 (AU$474).

The higher-end model of the OnePlus 3 is believed to come packed with the same Snapdragon processor, 6GB of RAM and 64 GB of native memory. As of writing this, there is no information on the price of the premium version of OnePlus 3.

Both the variants of the OnePlus 3are expected to be shipped with 5.5-inch display screens, supporting full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Moreover, both the models are tipped to sport a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera along with an 8MP front shooter.

Prevailing speculations indicate that the both the variants of the OnePlus 3 would run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based Hydrogen OS 2.0 for the Chinese market. For the international models the company would ship the smartphones with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow-based Oxygen OS 3.0 pre-installed.

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