OnePlus CEO explains why his company makes a TV | News and reviews

SAN FRANCISCO – OnePlus thinks that can change the way smart TVs work. So that's one of them.

The company's new 4K LED Smart TV, coming out next year, is the first product of its kind produced by the growing smartphone maker. We spoke with OnePlus founder and CEO, Pete Lau, for an exclusive interview, where he elaborated on what he wanted to change on the TV scene.

"I think for more than a year to enter the smart home sector," Lau said in Chinese through a translator. (All quotes from this story will come from the translator.) "It's not just about creating a TV, we want to explore what OnePlus can do in the smart home industry."

Lau is best known as the head of a mobile phone company, but he has experience in electronics and video. Prior to OnePlus, he was Head of Oppo's DVD Player Division. Oppo DVD players were widely regarded as beautiful, performing and expensive kit parts. we rated one of them 4.5 stars in 2012. Now he creates a new division to develop his television.

Talk Back to the TV

The goal is to use TV as a "clean, efficient and smart" hub for your smart home, he said. It means combining an entertainment-oriented smart TV platform with something more like a smart speaker or a smart screen, which answers questions and controls other devices. It's not television as a target, but as a source.

OnePlus does not yet share its operating system partner, but it's a big traditional provider. OnePlus does not deploy its own platform; its TVs will be integrated into existing ecosystems.

"Television does not have to be a television that broadcasts movies or series or TV shows.It can be a home automation system to control the climate and entertainment system of your home or the window to communicate with the world ". .

The vision that he described involved a television with far field microphones that could answer questions from anywhere in the house and functioned more as a virtual assistant than as an entertainment center.

"In my cell phone, I have my agenda.When I get up in the morning, the agenda will appear in the TV with local time, weather, temperature, information about my hotel and tips on how to dress. " I said.

It will also connect well to smartphones, according to OnePlus internal documents.

"Something that seems as simple as posting photos from your mobile phone on a TV is difficult to achieve, "Lau said in a press release.

Lau TV will also receive updates, Lau said. This is certainly one of the ways in which the smart TV industry could change. Samsung, for example, is abandoning support and updates for many of its smart TVs after two years, leaving orphaned and often failing applications. Working with a traditional platform, rather than creating a proprietary platform, will help, Lau said.

"It's our opportunity: we need to make sure we can have the updates and make sure people feel we're up to date," Lau said.

This is only the beginning

This does not mean that the features of the TV are fully defined. As it does with its smartphones, OnePlus will consider the suggestions of its community about the features to include, which I think no other TV maker does.

OnePlus does not manufacture LCDs, so it will buy the panels from a third party, but the company will develop its own chips and image processing algorithms, Lau said. "We need to reach the best level, so we have positioned Sony's image quality as a reference," Lau said.

So why not a decoder? Lau m reminded the problem "HDMI 1". Basically, people are much more likely to use the default interface on their TVs. "We want a seamless user experience," he said. "People do not want two things, the mission for us is to combine the two things."

The price, of course, is still in the air. The OnePlus TV will be "premium", but Lau said that OnePlus was ready to take a haircut on its profit margin to start building a user base.

Lau pushed back the questions about the difficult delivery dates for the new TV, as well as its release date. Although, as he pointed out, smart TV markets in India and China are growing rapidly and he is talking to me in the United States.

We'll know more about the new TV early next year, Lau said.