In summary:
- Tech Advisor reports speculation of a 25% price hike for the OnePlus 16, potentially reaching £1,060 in the UK compared to the OnePlus 15’s £849 price point.
- Rising costs of RAM and expensive 2nm processors like the expected Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip are driving the anticipated price increase across flagship smartphones.
- This substantial price jump could significantly impact OnePlus’s competitive positioning in the premium smartphone market against established rivals.
Amidst constant talk of smartphones getting more expensive, the OnePlus 16 has been tipped for a huge price hike.
It’s no longer particularly noteworthy when an industry figure makes doomy predictions (or indeed announcements) concerning smartphone price hikes.
So Samsung wants to bump up the pricing of its Galaxy S26 range, which has barely changed in the case of two of the three models? That’s just the new normal, folks.
But even we were taken aback by fresh speculation from prolific leaker Digital Chat Station. The tipster has taken to Weibo to make a “bold prediction” that the OnePlus 16 – in addition to forthcoming flagship smartphones from iQOO and Redmi – will cost around ¥5,000.
Given that the OnePlus 15 landed at ¥4,000 back in October, this would represent a sizeable 25% price hike. It wouldn’t be out of the question for the global model to follow suit.
Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd
If you applied a similar 25% hike to the UK model of the OnePlus 16, it would mean a rise from £849 (the OnePlus 15’s launch price) to around £1,060. That would represent a serious increase, even if OnePlus opted to round things off at a nice clean £999.
We can doubtless thank rising RAM prices for such a spike, but the tipster mentioned something else in their post. The thing that all three of these flagship phones share in common is that they will run on processors “built on a 2nm process” – likely a reference to the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip.
It seems likely that Qualcomm’s next-gen System-on-Chip (SoC) is going to be a pricy component, compounding the existing component pressures brought about by the AI boom.
We need to season this particular rumour with salt, given the apparently jovial nature of the post, added to the imprecise nature of machine translation. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself paying £200 more for your flagship phone in late 2026 or early 2027.
Elsewhere in OnePlus news, the 15T is shaping up to be a real corker, but you might not be able to buy it.
Author: Jon Mundy, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Jon is a freelance journalist who got his start covering mobile games at the dawn of the App Store. He has since covered everything from smart home tech and laptops to food and culture, but always seems to return to his fascination with smartphones.