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We can now confirm the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 Limited Edition has a fake sandstone back, as initially suspected. The smartphone in question hit the market earlier this month, and one YouTuber promptly took it apart on video. What else is there to do until CD Projekt Red finally releases the thing?
A cyberpunk phone getting something akin to the chop shop treatment is a pretty cyberpunk thing to happen. But anyway, the teardown that you can see below confirms the sandstone look of this OnePlus 8T model’s back panel is fake. The back of the device is still made of glass, that is. The illusion of gritty texture is a result of a realistic-looking vinyl. So, a sticker applied to the rear side of the handset, beneath the glass layer.
It’s hardly a surprise that OnePlus didn’t design a whole different smartphone for this limited iteration of the device. Such changes would have been costly to implement as they’d require radical changes to its supply, manufacture, and assembly setup.
This way, only the process of assembling the OnePlus 8T is truly different. And so the handset likely isn’t significantly more expensive to put together compared to the regular variant.
The unique camera look of the device is also inconsequential in terms of specs, likely for the same reasons. It’s just a larger glass panel stuck the even larger glass panel constituting the rear side of the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 Limited Edition.
The cost-effectiveness factor surely played a large role in OnePlus going with a fake sandstone back over the real thing. As the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 Limited Edition will retail at the equivalent of $599. Making it just as accessible as the standard model that comes with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM.
There are no other memory configurations to choose from if you want this collector’s item, either. But it’s not like getting your hands on one of these is going to be easy, anyway. Assuming you’re not located in China, the only market for which the flagship has been confirmed so far.
Granted, you can always choose to import one of these curiosities. But keep in mind it will be running a reskinned version of HydrogenOS, not OxygenOS. And the former isn’t in English.
Though there’s a decent chance some modder will adapt its Cyberpunk 2077 elements with some custom firmware of their own. After all, OnePlus is one of the rare few remaining Android brands with a lively custom ROM community.