If you haven't heard of OnePlus, then you are not alone.  The two-year-old Chinese startup company has had a lot of followers in spite of not really advertising, but rather working out of word-of-mouth and guerilla marketing.  The newest model of the OnePlus X could make it a competitor to other Android phones like the ones from Samsung, LG, Sony, and Motorola, and this is what is known about the OnePlus X Android Smartphone Review, Release Date, Price, Specs, and Availability.

The Verge calls the OnePlus X "a low-cost Android phone in a high-end disguise", because they feel that the phone should cost $500, but only goes for $249.  OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei does not really know how to classify his phones, but he won't call them mid-range.  Pei believes that he wants to make great products, but a price point of $100 or $150 would make that goal impossible. 

The OnePlus X is a five-inch phone with an AMOLED display with 1080 x 1920 resolution.  It comes with 3 GB of memory, and it has a microSD slot good for up to 128 GB of storage.  The SD slot is a first for OnePlus, and it will most certainly be on later versions of their phones.  The rear-facing camera is 13 Megapixels, and the front-facing one is 7.6 Megapixels. 

There is a drawback with its processor, as it uses a Snapdragon 801, which was new for smartphones that came out 18 months ago.  It also does not have NFC or a fingerprint sensor, and these are considered standards in the smartphone world today. Also, Pocket-Lint reports that the version of Android that OnePlus is running is Lollipop (also known as Android L or version 5.0), with mix of an operating system known as OxygenOS.  Considering that other Android smartphones are playing the waiting game as far as the upgrade to Android M (also known as version 6.0 or Marshmallow) is concerned, it is not known if the OnePlus X will get that Android upgrade. 

According to Phone Arena, the OnePlus X comes with an etched metal frame with two backplate versions: the Onyx, with a polished glass back.  The other version is the Ceramic, a fire-baked version that only has 10,000 units available.  This device will cost about $414. 

So this begs the question of how to get a OnePlus X smartphone.  Well, you need to be on the "invite system" which involves heading over to the OnePlus site and laying down money for a pre-order.  The invite system is only one-month long, but after that, the company will open orders to the public for a limited time every week as it can get more of these new smartphones out. 

Just so you know, the OnePlus 2 had a three-week shipping delay earlier this summer, so hopefully the OnePlus X won't have the same problems.  By the way, the OnePlus 2 was barely released, having come into the market in August of this year. 

It is interesting to see the OnePlus X, which isn't backed by a large company, strive to make sales in a smartphone-dominated world.  Perhaps we are looking at a new age of "indie smartphones".