OnePlus is canceling the base model OnePlus 9 Pro and only selling a $1,069 version | GeekComparison

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  • The new camera block of the OnePlus 9 Pro.

  • Not much has changed at the front.

    Ron Amadeo

  • The back is extremely shiny.

    Ron Amadeo

  • This isn’t a light trick: the phone is silver on the top and a mirror on the bottom, and the materials transition smoothly from one to the next.

    Ron Amadeo

  • If some of these photos look noisy, it’s not my fault! The OnePlus 9 Pro is muted in real life. A dot pattern is printed on the back to get the gradient mirror look. Zoom in on the previous hand photo and you can see the effect quite clearly.

    Ron Amadeo

  • A close-up of the OnePlus 9 Pro’s camera block. It’s very shiny.

    Ron Amadeo

  • The bottom contains one of the two speakers, a USB-C port and the SIM card tray.

    Ron Amadeo

  • Did I mention OnePlus basically sent me a mirror to shoot? I’m probably in all of these pictures if you look hard enough. Hi.

    Ron Amadeo

  • The front and side.

  • The hole punch camera. Pretty standard.

    Ron Amadeo

  • One surprise is how much lower the fingerprint reader is (left) compared to the OnePlus 8 Pro (right).

    Ron Amadeo

  • If you don’t look straight at it, the back is just silvery.

    Ron Amadeo

The global chip shortage claims another victim.

Android Police reports that OnePlus is canceling the base model of the OnePlus 9 Pro for the US. When announcing the phone in March 2021, OnePlus said the device would start at $969 for a version with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but that model isn’t coming out. Instead, the phone is effectively getting a price increase in the US, as only the $1,069 version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage will be sold in the US.

OnePlus started selling the $1,069 SKU on time back in April, but the $969 version was never on sale in the US and never went up for pre-order. OnePlus issued the following statement to Android Police:

The OnePlus 9 Pro 8×128 GB variant was originally set to retail in North America for $969. Due to unforeseen supply restrictions specific to North American devices, we have unfortunately recently concluded that it is no longer possible to ship this configuration to the United States and bring it to Canada. In North America, we prioritize the 12×256 GB version to ensure our users have access to the highest spec device.

OnePlus’ statement that it is “prioritizing” the more expensive OnePlus 9 Pro indicates that this is a choice of the company. OnePlus promised a $969 phone and now chooses not to deliver it. The company for sure could be get the right sized RAM and storage chips and sell both models with a shortage, but instead it seems to be using the chip shortage as an excuse to push customers towards a more expensive phone.

This is the second time that OnePlus has negatively changed the deal it promised during the OnePlus 9 launch. After launch, the company was caught throttling devices while they were running popular apps, such as Chrome. The company said it was trying to extend battery life, a worthy goal, but it did so by blocking some apps from accessing the four largest CPU cores. A report from Anandtech found that Chrome scored 85 to 75 percent below normal in some tests. On the plus side, OnePlus has extended the support window for the 9 Pro to three years of OS updates and four years of security updates.

Frame image by Ron Amadeo

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