OnePlus McLaren phones are officially cancelled

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No, we won't see a OnePlus 8T McLaren Edition

OnePlus Concept One
(Image credit: Future)

The rumors were true: a McLaren official has confirmed that there won’t be another OnePlus McLaren edition. 

The luxury automaker recently dropped the OnePlus logo from its Partners page, leading to speculation that the refined and pricey OnePlus McLaren editions had been cancelled. The car company finally confirmed that there wouldn’t be another partner-produced version of a OnePlus phone in a statement sent to Android Authority:

“Our partnership with OnePlus, which came to its scheduled conclusion recently, has been a highly successful collaboration between two iconic and innovative brands,” McLaren’s statement read. “Since the start of this partnership in 2018, OnePlus has been a supportive, valued partner and we wish them well and hope to see them in the future.”

We’d seen exactly two of the fancy editions starting with the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition in 2018 and followed with the OnePlus 7T McLaren Edition. 

At CES 2020, the phonemaker showed off the OnePlus Concept One that featured McLaren window tech to hide its rear cameras, but that wasn’t a consumer-ready device. Since we hadn’t heard whether a new McLaren Edition would accompany the next OnePlus 8T generation, we weren’t sure if we’d see another again. That question seems to have been answered.

The best time to cancel a fancy OnePlus McLaren edition?

Of course, we’re not in the best market for costlier versions of flagship phones anyway, and each generation of the once-affordable OnePlus handsets have been pricier than the last.  

Thus, it was probably time for the OnePlus McLaren editions to reach the end of the road anyway and stop trying to compete with the likes of the Huawei Mate 30 Porsche edition and the Oppo Find X Lamborghini. But given the seemingly amicable splitting of ways between OnePlus and McLaren, perhaps a partnership sometime in the future is possible – when the market’s ready for another luxury carmaker’s take on a smartphone.

  • OnePlus 8T: all we know about the next OnePlus flagship
David Lumb
David Lumb

David is now a mobile reporter at Cnet. Formerly Mobile Editor, US for TechRadar, he covered phones, tablets, and wearables. He still thinks the iPhone 4 is the best-looking smartphone ever made. He's most interested in technology, gaming and culture – and where they overlap and change our lives. His current beat explores how our on-the-go existence is affected by new gadgets, carrier coverage expansions, and corporate strategy shifts.