OnePlus 3 officially coming to the UK exclusively via O2 carrier

In a surprising move, OnePlus announced that it will sell its OnePlus 3 smartphone in the UK through major carrier O2. The UK-based network operator will have exclusivity over the sales of the smartphone in the country, so it's unclear whether or not other carrier will stock it as well.

“As the only operator in the UK to sell the OnePlus 3, we’re proud to be bringing our customers more choice when it comes to picking their next flagship phone,” said Magnus McDonald, Head of Devices at O2.

Potential customers will be pleased to know that the OnePlus 3 will be available in O2 brick and mortar stores, as well as online, from September 29. The carrier also announced that its Westfield White City store will host a OnePlus pop-up event from 10am to 10pm. As for prices, O2 will offer the OnePlus 3 for free from £28 a month on the O2 Refresh plans.

For that monthly amount, customers will get a premium smartphone with metal body. Specs-wise, the OnePlus 3 is more than decent. It offers a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display that supports full HD (1080p) resolution and features Corning Gorilla Glass 4 coating.

Under the hood, the OnePlus 3 packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, coupled with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory. Another major feature of the high-end smartphone is the 16-megapixel rear-facing camera with OIS (optical image stabilization), phase-detection autofocus and 4K video recording. There's also a secondary 8-megapixel camera in the front for selfies.

The OnePlus 3 ships with OxygenOS, which is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. The Chinese company pushes important OS updates for the OnePlus 3 pretty often, which is one more reason to take it into consideration.

“We chose O2 as our exclusive partner in this important market because they have a history of focusing on the most premium smartphones for the most savvy users, which aligns very well with our products and users,” said Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus.