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Rumors have pegged the next big OnePlus flagship as the OnePlus 5, and it seems evidence of that has arrived thanks to Chinese authorities. The device has passed through the company’s regulatory body as the OnePlus A5000. If we consider that the OnePlus One, OnePlus 2, and OnePlus 3 were all A100*, A200*, and A300*, respectively, then we can only assume that A5000 refers to OnePlus 5.
But wait, what the hell happened to 4? Well, if you were thinking that a mad scientist at OnePlus went on some crazed experiment to create a sentiently aware smartphone and decided to abandon all hope once the device seemed primed to destroy the human overlords which created it (which is totally believable as the next great Michael Bay flick), guess again.
What’s really going on is a simple and very cute case of phobia. You see, OnePlus is a Chinese company first and foremost, and folks in that country take issue with the number “4”.
This is because the word for “4” in China phonetically resembles the word for “death,” and they don’t play about their omens over yonder. They go as far as having elevators “skip” any floors with the number “4” in their highrise buildings. The elevators don’t actually skip a floor, though. They just consider what we know to be the 4th floor as the 5th floor.
Fun Fact: Chinese elevators sometimes omit the unlucky number “13,” and they can also skip ALL the 40s.
Even stranger, though, is that the number 5 could also be seen as a bad omen in China, though its alternative semblance to the word for “no” or “not” is far less ominous than 4’s similarity to “death,” so there’s typically no biggie there.
So, there you have it. There will likely never be a OnePlus 4, and if OnePlus finds themselves lucky enough to launch 15 flagship devices in their lifetime we probably won’t be seeing a OnePlus 14, either. Of course, OnePlus has bigger issues on their hand than worrying about silly things like this, so we’ll let them get back to it.
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