OnePlus held its first fan gathering in the South East Asian region in Kuala Lumpur last weekend as part of the company’s efforts in setting up its presence in the Malaysian market, and shared a few interesting snippets of information to those present. Chief among them were more details on when its flagship One smartphone will be coming to the country.
According to OnePlus’s Head of Business Development for South East Asia, CP Lim, the OnePlus One should be officially available in Malaysia by the end of this year. The company is still in talks with candidates over the open position of the General Manager for its Malaysian operations, and said that “many interesting candidates” had applied for the job, including some prominent members within the telecommunications industry.
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On the subject of the One smartphone, one of the main concerns raised during the event were about the local support infrastructure for the One owners, both official and parallel import units. Lim stated that efforts are already being taken to set up a local service centre, which should be ready when the device is available here. The centre will house adequate parts for servicing, and will also support devices not bought officially with OnePlus.
Lim did caution those who bought the model sold for the Chinese market: because the radio setup is different from the international model, the company may not be stocking parts for the Chinese model in its service centre. Hence, while OnePlus will still take in AP sets for repairs, these units will not be covered under warranty (even for the international model) and owners will be charged for repairs. Those who send in the Chinese model for repairs may have to wait for specific parts to be ordered before repairs can be done.
Finally, there’s the issue of retail price. According to Lim, the OnePlus One will be priced “about the same” as the official $299 and $349 retail prices for the international model. Both the 16GB Silk White and 64GB Sandstone Black versions will be sold here. Interestingly, OnePlus also stated that the One will be getting the Android 5.0 Lollipop update within the next 90 days, as Google has already made the source code available to all smartphone manufacturers.
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