OnePlus 16 showed three colors and 1 TB storage; it won’t officially arrive in Europe

OnePlus launched pre-orders in China for its new flagship and, in the process, showed you what OnePlus 16 will look like. It also revealed three colorful variants and a full list of memory configurations, ending with 16 + 1 TB. It hasn’t announced the release date yet, even though everything points to October—exactly one year after the debut of the Fifteen.

Three colors and a back that lights up

The phone will come in colors Tomorrow’s Starlight, Mars Masterpiece, and Dark Forest. The Light version is the most interesting of the trio: OnePlus has built an interactive, breathing light into the back panel that backlights the logo and the embossed coordinates, and it treats the surface with a process it calls “silk glass,” designed to resist fingerprints. The orange and silver variants also feature a subtle pattern on the back reminiscent of contour lines.

Otherwise, the design has changed only slightly from the predecessor. In the top-left corner there’s a square metal island with three camera lenses and an LED flash; the corners are noticeably rounded, and there’s a configurable AI button on the left edge. Web GSMArena notes that at a quick glance the Sixteen is almost indistinguishable from the Fifteen.

Storage up to 16 + 1 TB

The pre-order page revealed four configurations: 12 + 256 GB, 12 + 512 GB, 16 + 512 GB, and the top 16 + 1 TB. A terabyte in a phone is no longer a novelty, but it still remains a privilege of the most expensive models—and OnePlus offers it right in the standard lineup, not only in some Ultra version.

Pricing is not yet known. With the previous generation, Chinese prices started out significantly lower than European ones, so the same old rule will likely apply: what looks like an excellent price-to-spec deal in China will reach us via a different route—and for different money.

What we know about the specs from leaks

OnePlus has not officially confirmed the technical specs, but the leaks so far show a fairly good match. It’s said to feature a flat BOE X4 panel with a 6.78-inch diagonal, which should run at 165 Hz across the entire system and boost up to 185 Hz in optimized games. Performance is expected to be handled by the latest Qualcomm flagship chip. Gizmochina lists it as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro; other sources attribute a different model, a 2 nm manufacturing process, and LPDDR6 memory support.

The battery deserves the most attention. In leaks mentioning 9000 mAh, it would be about 1700 mAh more than in the OnePlus 15, and it would be one of the largest capacities you can find in a regular phone. It should be paired with 100 W wired charging, which was also confirmed by China’s 3C certification, and 50 W wireless charging. The camera setup is said to be built around a 200 MP main sensor sized 1/1.4 inch, complemented by a 50 MP ultra-wide lens and a 50 MP periscope telephoto lens.

The system will be ColorOS 17 built on Android 17. Let’s remember that this year OnePlus announced the end of its own OxygenOS. Starting with Android 17, its parent company Oppa’s software replaces it across all phones.

When will it arrive and where will it be sold?

There’s no official release date yet, but the competition is already hot on its heels: iQOO 16 launches on 29 September—and both phones will run on the same chipset. That’s why OnePlus rushed to show the design preview. Pre-orders are live, and you can reserve the phone even before you find out the price.

The worse news is where the phone won’t go. Earlier this July, OnePlus confirmed that it’s stopping the release of new products in Europe and North America, and OnePlus 15 was its last new offering for these markets. So the Sixteen is exclusively a China-only affair, and according to leaks it will also skip India.

For us, that means you won’t find OnePlus 16 in Slovak stores and the brand will gradually disappear here. Anyone who wants similar specs with a proper European warranty will have to look at Oppo phones, which is taking over OnePlus’s role in Europe and uses the same software and much of the same technology. The second option is importing from China. However, you should expect that the phone may not support all European bands, and servicing is handled separately by each provider.

The following table summarizes what we know about the phone. Storage and colors are official; the rest comes from leaks and certifications, so take it as likely, not confirmed.

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