Most of the world is probably familiar with 13 being the unlucky number, but for those with Chinese or even East Asian heritage, the unlucky number comes a lot much sooner. Case in point is the OnePlus’ next flagship. Based on a certification in China, that will be the OnePlus 5, which will follow last year’s OnePlus 3. If you’re wondering whatever happened to the OnePlus 4, it didn’t get scrapped. It just never existed at all. That’s because in China and other East Asian countries, the number 4, not 13, is considered deadly unlucky.
There’s actually a formal term for this line of thinking: tetraphobia. Just as a trivia, the fear of the number 13 has a more complicated name: triskaidekaphobia. This belief comes from the fact that the word for “four” in the Chinese, Korea, and Japanese languages sounds similar to their word for “death”.
That’s why any number ending in 4, including 14, 24, 34, and so on, is avoided at all costs. That applies mostly to buildings but, from time to time, even to products. Of course, that didn’t stop some manufactures, like Xiaomi or Samsung from putting out models with those numbers and surviving unscathed. At this point, some might joke about 7 being the unlucky number for Samsung.
Tetraphobia aside, the certification doesn’t exactly give any other hint about the OnePlus 5 other than its model name: A5000. For more information, we’ll have to earlier leaks. Naturally, the OnePlus 5 is expected to run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, which means it won’t be coming until the second half of the year. There is also talk of a 23 megapixel rear camera and a dual curved glass ala the Galaxy Edge.
Two features make the OnePlus 5 potentially intriguing. One is an 8 GB variant, making it one of the first to have that much RAM, at a time when giants like Samsung and LG stubbornly refuse to budge. And then there’s 5.5-inch screen which finally makes the jump to 2K resolutions. It will be interesting to see how that will be received among OnePlus fans who were OK with the lower resolution as long as it meant a longer battery life.
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