Depending on how you look at it, there may not be OnePlus 11 or there may not be OnePlus 11 Pro, at least according to one notable leaker.
Max Jambor – who is not one of the most prolific tipsters but has a reasonable track record – continued Twitter (opens in a new tab) that the next OnePlus flagship will be called OnePlus 11 and that we will not see OnePlus 11 Pro next to it.
However, if you were counting on professional specs, you don’t need to worry, at least according to Jambor, as OnePlus 11 will apparently be a OnePlus 11 Pro in all respects.
In fact, if this rumor did come true, there won’t be a phone called OnePlus 11 Pro, but neither will there be a phone with the specs we’d expect from a standard OnePlus 11.
In continuation of the tweet (opens in a new tab)Jambor claimed the OnePlus 11 would land in the first quarter of 2023 (which is somewhere between January and March next year) and suggested they didn’t know what they were planning otherwise, so it’s not out of the question that the standard OnePlus 11 will land later – but if it does able, seemingly will need a new name.
Analysis: Confusing naming strategy, but so is the current one
If OnePlus abandons the Pro name in 2023, it risks confusing potential buyers who might assume the OnePlus 11 is more of a “standard” flagship than a top-of-the-line one (similar to the iPhone 14 and Google Pixel 7, found under their Pro-branded siblings) . But it’s also a change that makes sense considering OnePlus introduced the OnePlus 10 Pro this year, without the standard OnePlus 10.
This in itself is confusing as it is prudent to assume the 10 Pro would be the Pro version of OnePlus 10 – a phone that doesn’t exist.
This problem is because OnePlus previously launched both standard and Pro models, and the names made sense back then, but with the switch to one flagship model in the first half of the year, things got confused.
So, this renaming – if it does – resolves one confusion when creating another. Even so, whatever the name of this upcoming phone is worth paying attention to as based on its past form, there’s a good chance it will be among the best phones on the market.