OnePlus expands from phones and audio to… mechanical keyboards?

OnePlus is making its first mechanical keyboard in a collaboration with keyboard manufacturer Keychron.

The creation will be the first to come from the new ‘OnePlus Featuring’ initiative that OnePlus has announced where it plans to work with other companies to design new products.

It’s not clear how much each company will contribute to the design and manufacture of the keyboard, so it remains to be seen if we’ll end up with a Keychron keyboard with OnePlus branding, or vice versa.

OnePlus said it had asked its online community to vote on which product the company should make next, having produced several smartphones, headphones, smartwatches, and other accessories such as bags.

For OnePlus to make a keyboard suggests the brand is opening its product reach further, while also trying to appeal to its traditionally technology enthusiast audience by choosing a mechanical keyboard.

Keychron is an obvious choice for such a collaboration as the company is well known in keyboard enthusiast circles and the compact Keychron Q3 even features in our own ranking of the best keyboards around. It’s a brand that delivers slick aesthetics without sacrificing the functionality that keyboard nerds demand, the same sort of balance OnePlus itself made its reputation on.

OnePlus has dabbled in collaborations in the past, such as when it launched a limited Collette edition of the OnePlus 3T in 2017 and has produced a special Star Wars edition of other phones as well as other branding exercises. But the Keychron partnership appears to go one step further, with OnePlus claiming in a statement, “this will mark the first time that OnePlus has invited an industry partner to join its co-creation process.”

In a press release OnePlus did not expand on when the keyboard will be released, nor to which regions or its cost.

While OnePlus started out producing only one phone at a time, it now makes many models and sells different ones in different countries. The company also announced today it has achieved 43.8% growth in Asia Pacific and 104.6% growth in India in the first three quarters of this year.

We rather liked its last flagship phone the OnePlus 10 Pro as well as the great value OnePlus Nord 2T, which both rank high up on our list of the best OnePlus phones.