OnePlus 3 release date: Co-founder Carl Pei says new smartphone could hit shelves by June

Much like its predecessors, the OnePlus 3 is expected to be a powerful yet super-affordable smartphone offering a host of top-shelf specs at a price a good deal less than Samsung, LG and other premium brands. And now, we might have a better idea of when we can expect to get the phone, made by Chinese manufacturer OnePlus in our pockets.

In an interview with CNet, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said the company's latest smartphone is expected to launch by the end of Q2 2016, meaning we could be seeing it as early as June. Pei told the website that the OnePlus 3 will sport a new design and that the company wants to recapture the magic of the original OnePlus smartphone by launching something that will "captivate" users.

The OnePlus One was a big hit with consumers when it launched in April 2014. The handset was designed to compete against flagship smartphones of the time such as the HTC One M9 and Samsung Galaxy S5 and came with enough technology to make it a more than worthy adversary. It also came with CyanogenMod, an open-source operating system that allowed users to more freely tweak their phone's functionality, although this was ditched for the OnePlus 2.

Despite the OnePlus 2 still proving a strong handset, it seems OnePlus isn't as enthusiastic about how it was received by consumers and is now trying to relive the glory days with the release of the OnePlus 3. Some of the features hinted at for the device so far include either a 1080p or Quad HD screen, a Snapdragon 820 processor and a huge 3,500 MaH battery. Some reports suggest that the handset will be launched in two variants, with a 16GB model coming with 4GB RAM and a 64GB version packing a frankly ludicrous 5GB RAM.

If these reports hold water, it seems the OnePlus 3 will have more than enough to take on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5, both of which we were able to get our hands on at the Mobile World Congress 2016 and were very much impressed by. No doubt it will also be able to give the HTC One M10 a run for its money too, although official details on HTC's latest handset remain scarce for now.