A OnePlus designer shows off what the 6 could have looked like

Hao Ran is an industrial designer who has taken to spilling the odd insight on OnePlus' esthetic development process. He has already revealed that the OEM was considering a version of the 7T (one of its latest phones) finished in a bright, glossy golden color. Now, this employee's Weibo account has been updated with an early direction for how the 6 was intended to look.

This image would have made for an outstanding phone in 2018, as most Snapdragon 845-powered devices from that year had glass rear panels. However, this one is depicted as having one made of wood with a narrow vertical grain in a "canvas blue" shade.

It is somewhat ironic for this retroactive leak to be posted now, as OnePlus is never likely to consider such a finish again: its new "electronic CMF" ethic means that its future devices may be encased in novel forms of glass with color-shifting qualities.

This possible version of the OnePlus 6 also had a rear-facing fingerprint scanner and logo in a shade of gold also found in real-world white color SKUs of this phone. These devices have also proven attractive enough in terms of software updates: it has already received 1 new stable and 1 new beta build based on Android 10 in January 2020.