OnePlus Ace 2 is official in China with a OnePlus 11-inspired design and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor under the hood. If you’ve been keeping track, you’d probably know that this is the phone that is very likely to be rebranded as the OnePlus 11R for the Indian market. Unlike the predecessor models, the OnePlus Ace 2 and OnePlus 11R are launching on the same day, i.e., February 7, 2023. The Ace 2 will be launched a bit earlier at around 12pm (IST) while the OnePlus 11R is set to break cover at 7:30pm during OnePlus’s global “cloud 11” event.

As is usually the case, OnePlus has listed the OnePlus Ace 2 on its China website well in advance, leaving nothing to the imagination as far as design is concerned. Unlike the original OnePlus Ace or OnePlus 10R which had a standout flat-edge design of its own and no alert slider, its successor draws heavily from an existing OnePlus phone, aka the OnePlus 11 which is to say that some major changes are incoming.

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There are two big takeaways that are almost instantly visible. The OnePlus Ace 2 is much curvier— relative to the Ace 1— and it brings back the alert slider. The phone will come in two colours including silver and grey. Both appear to have a matte finish (the outer frame is glossy) though that’s based solely on promo renders. There is a very high possibility that OnePlus is using a plastic build in this phone. The OnePlus 11’s black-hole camera design has evidently trickled down to this phone, too, though it’s not as striking for obvious reasons. The OnePlus Ace 2 or OnePlus 11R is expected to be relatively affordable than the OnePlus 11.

The OnePlus Ace 2 is further confirmed to come with a hole punch cut-out at the centre of its curved screen.

OnePlus is keeping core hardware specs under the wraps at the time of writing. All that it has revealed is that the phone in question will have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip at helm. The same chip will drive the India-bound OnePlus 11R. One of the key USPs of the OnePlus Ace aka OnePlus 10R was its incredibly fast 150W fast charging. It would be interesting to see how things pan out for the successor in this regard. More details are awaited.  

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