OnePlus launched the OnePlus 16 in China on the evening of October 12, positioning its new number-series flagship squarely at mobile gamers. The phone goes on sale across all channels, including the OPPO Store, JD.com, Tmall, Pinduoduo and Douyin, at 10:00 on October 13.
The OnePlus 16 is among the first phones to ship with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, built on TSMC's 2nm process with a fourth-generation all-big-core CPU that peaks at 5GHz. OnePlus pairs it with a fan-free Glacier cooling system and a game-scheduling kernel written into the chip's firmware.
The headline component is a 6.78-inch 1.5K display that OnePlus calls its fourth-generation Oriental Screen. Co-developed with BOE using a new X4 light-emitting material, it reaches 185Hz in supported games and runs at up to 165Hz system-wide, with an LTPO circuit that scales from 1Hz to 165Hz. It also uses 3840Hz PWM dimming.
Three in-house chips handle the rest of the gaming pipeline: a G3 network chip with an anti-interference antenna, a P4 display chip for motion clarity, and a T3 touch chip that raises multi-finger touch sampling to 520Hz and, according to OnePlus, cuts average touch latency by 29%. At launch, native 185FPS modes are supported in titles including Game for Peace, Arena Breakout, Delta Force, CrossFire and Valorant Mobile, while Honor of Kings runs at a native 165FPS.
The battery grows to 9,000mAh from the OnePlus 15's 7,300mAh, with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging and bypass charging to reduce heat during play. The rear camera system moves to a 200MP main sensor alongside a 50MP 3x periscope telephoto and a 50MP ultra-wide, using OPPO's LUMO imaging engine. The phone runs ColorOS 17 and carries IP66, IP68, IP69 and IP69K ratings.
First-sale promotional prices are 5,699 yuan for 12GB plus 256GB, 6,499 yuan for 12GB plus 512GB, 7,199 yuan for 16GB plus 512GB and 8,199 yuan for 16GB plus 1TB. With national or regional subsidies, which vary by region, the four versions come to 5,199, 5,999, 6,699 and 7,699 yuan respectively.
Those launch prices are 1,700 to 2,800 yuan higher than the OnePlus 15's launch prices for the same configurations. Rising memory costs have already pushed OnePlus to raise the official price of the OnePlus 15 twice this year, with its 12GB plus 256GB version going from 3,999 yuan to 5,099 yuan at the end of June.
SEE ALSO: OnePlus 15 Launches with 165 Hz Display and Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Ultimate · OPPO ColorOS 17 Adds On-Device Linear-Attention Model and Persona X Agents