The US smartphone market is inextricably linked with telecom carriers, with neither able to survive on its own. While smartphone brands have had decent success in other regions when selling unlocked and independently, the dynamics of the US market are such that OEMs need to court carriers to place their phones in carrier stores, where the average consumer is much more likely to pick them up. That's the reason why a lot of Chinese OEMs have failed to make an in-road in the US market. For OnePlus, the company could be returning to carrier stores for its upcoming smartphone, as code within OxygenOS suggests that the OnePlus 9 might return to Verizon.
When OnePlus launched the OnePlus 8T earlier this month, it was not launched on Verizon Wireless in the USA. The last phone from the Chinese company to launch on Verizon was the OnePlus 8 5G UW, which was a special version of the OnePlus 8 with mmWave antennas for supporting Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband network. The phone also had an IP68 rating, something that the global OnePlus 8 lacked.
Early last month, XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username spotted what is likely the codename for the OnePlus 9 series — lemonade. Specifically, there are five variants of lemonade, and based on our understanding of OnePlus codenames, we presume these devices would be:
- lemonade -- OnePlus 9
- lemonadet -- T-Mobile OnePlus 9
- lemonadev -- Verizon OnePlus 9
- lemonadep -- OnePlus 9 Pro
- lemonadept -- T-Mobile OnePlus 9 Pro
Now, within the latest APK for the Settings app from Open Beta 3 for the OnePlus 8 series, XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username also discovered more evidence that lemonadev will be a OnePlus smartphone for Verizon's network.
How do we know that lemonade is actually a OnePlus flagship and not another product in the mid-range/budget Nord lineup? Evidence at hand dictates that this phone (series) will come with a flagship processor from Qualcomm.
A method called isSM8X50Products returns true if the board name matches the value returned by another method called isLemonadeProducts. The other names mentioned between the 'or' operators, namely msmnile and kona are codenames for SM8150 (part number for the Snapdragon 855) and SM8250 (part number for the Snapdragon 865). Lemonade's presence within this method gives us plenty of confidence that the device will be running on the SM8350, or the Snapdragon 875 as it would be more popularly known.
While the adoption of Qualcomm's next flagship processor on the next flagship series from OnePlus should come as no real surprise, readers in the USA can look forward to picking up the devices from their carrier stores. If the past phones are any indication, the Verizon OnePlus 9 could also be featuring mmWave and possibly other changes (such as different button placement).
Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications, and thanks to XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username for the tip!