OnePlus schedules event for 4/20, OnePlus Two incoming?

After a report revealed that Chinese startup OnePlus would be launching not 1, but 2 handsets this year, former Oppo vice president Pete Lau n’ friends are gearing up to announce something on April 20th. The company — which has upped their employee count from 6 to over 1,000 new workers — announced the news, where else, but on their Google+ page.

We’re not sure what they’ll be announcing, but it’s pretty short notice. Their announcement post didn’t give us any clues, only that “From here on out, anything could happen.” While it seems fairly sudden to announce a followup to last year’s OnePlus One, it has almost been a year since the original was announced. Still, we’re not ruling out the possibility of a new hemp backed OnePlus One cover either.

Jokes aside, we’d actually love to see a OnePlus Two and maybe smaller OnePlus Half unveiled on Monday. Despite countless flubs over marketing of the OnePlus One last year and an even more frustrating invite system, it’s hard to deny it was a great phone at an even more attractive price point. Recently, OnePlus launched their own in-house Android build for the device dubbed OxygenOS, followed shortly after by Cyanogen OS 12.

We wont have to wait too much longer, April 20th is barely a few more days away. Heck, even sooner if you’re in China. What do you guys think it will be. Even better, what are you hoping for?

Incoming Android Wear update could add support for standalone WiFi and new gesture controls

What’s the best way to respond to a competitor’s product unveiling? Well, probably to improve your existing counterpart. Not that we needed a report to know that Google was working on some new updates for Android Wear, but The Verge claims to have some fine detail about what’s coming in the next upgrade.

Two of the biggest things to expect are support for standalone WiFi and gesture-based UI navigation. The former would do away with the need to use Bluetooth to communicate with whatever device your Android Wear device is paired with. This is great for situations where you might not be close enough to your phone for your smart watch to pick it up, though it obviously means you have to have both devices on the same WiFi network.

As for those gestures, there isn’t much — a flick of the wrist can now help you scroll through the user interface instead of having to navigate with your finger — but it’s a nice and natural step forward for those who might need to control their watches hands-free.

One last change we’re told to expect is easier access to both contacts and applications menus. When’s all this coming? There’s no word yet, though Google hasn’t been terribly slow to iterate with Android Wear to this point, and if we’re already hearing details about what the new upgrade will bring we imagine it’s almost ready to come out of the oven.