After gradually rising through the ranks of the mobile industry since its splashy but shaky debut back in 2014, OnePlus was expected to prove this year it has what it takes to run with the big dogs even in challenging markets like the US.
On paper, the company certainly managed to prove just that, prolonging its successful partnership with T-Mobile and officially joining forces with Verizon for the first time ever for the commercial release of the
incredibly well-reviewed OnePlus 8 and
8 Pro supporting 5G connectivity as standard.
But while it’s hard not to like the former model, it was also disappointing for many people that the latter variant didn’t make its way to either of the two US carriers that picked up the “regular”
OnePlus 8 5G. Worse still, the unlocked OnePlus 8 Pro 5G was pretty much impossible to come by stateside for an excruciatingly long time, which actually led a number of power users to
pay a big premium for pre-owned units on eBay.
As much as we loved the phone both at first glance and
after spending a little quality time with it, we’d never recommend you do that, because lo and behold, the OnePlus 8 Pro 5G is finally available through its manufacturer’s official US website. There’s no telling how long this will last, of course, so you might want to hurry and place your order as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, the entry-level 8GB RAM/128GB storage variant in a beautiful Glacial Green hue is still listed as out of stock at the time of this writing, so we’re afraid you’ll have to cough up $999 instead of $899 for a 12GB RAM/256GB storage configuration in your choice of Onyx Black or Ultramarine Blue paint jobs if you want to make sure you won’t miss this possibly limited availability run.
Don’t forget that the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro are also the company’s first-ever devices to be officially sold on Amazon with built-in Alexa assistance, which may have actually contributed to these lengthy inventory issues.
The 6.78-inch handset with four rear-facing cameras in tow, a 120Hz display sporting a resolution of 3168 x 1440 pixels, and a 4,510mAh battery under the hood has been occasionally in stock over the last couple of months in this particular version, currently shipping within no more than 2 days in an Ultramarine Blue color.
