Today, OnePlus finally revealed the launch date of its new flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 9 Series, which will be streamed online, on March 23 at 10:00 AM ET.
The OnePlus 9 series will see major improvements in its camera system, as the company contracted Swedish photography pioneer Hasselblad, the same company that took photos of the first human steps on the moon in 1969, to co-develop the next generation of smartphone camera systems for future OnePlus flagship devices.
OnePlus plans to invest more than $150 million in a three-year partnership with Hasselblad through close R&D (research and development) collaboration, with research labs being opened in parts of the world including the US and Japan, to further build and improve its mobile photography capabilities, and the first fruits of this cooperation will appear in the upcoming 9 series.
This partnership will continually evolve over the next three years according to OnePlus, beginning with software improvements including color tuning and sensor calibration, and extending to more dimensions in the future.
The first result of this collaboration is the Natural Color Calibration with Hasselblad outcome which was jointly developed by OnePlus and Hasselblad over months to bring more accurate, natural-looking color perception to images and videos captured by OnePlus' flagship phones, and will also serve as a new standard for color calibration for its future smartphone cameras.
OnePlus hopes to become a pioneer in new areas of smartphone imaging technology for future OnePlus camera systems with this partnership, such as a panoramic camera with a 140-degree field of view, T-lens technology for lightning-fast focus the front-facing camera, and a free form lens that will be introduced first on the OnePlus 9 Series which could eliminate edge distortion in ultra-wide photos.
OnePlus is expected to release three new smartphones at this event: OnePlus 9, OnePlus 9 Pro, and OnePlus 9R, and they will use a custom Sony IMX789 sensor, which will enable them a 12-bit RAW shooting, offer improved HDR video recording, as well as support for capturing 4K 120FPS and 8K 30FPS video.