OnePlus Brings Back the Headphone Jack for Its Budget N6x

OnePlus will launch the N6x in India on July 31 with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a port the company spent years phasing out of its flagship phones. The budget handset arrives in Burgundy Red and Ice Blue, with a vertical rear camera housing borrowed from the Nord CE5. OnePlus says the phone can run for up to 2.5 days on a single charge.

The reveal lands in the roughest stretch for India’s budget smartphone buyers in years, with component costs surging and average prices climbing across nearly every price band. Where exactly the N6x will sit next to OnePlus’s own N6, already on sale in India, is still an open question, and that ambiguity says more about OnePlus’s crowded lineup than the phone itself does.

OnePlus Locks In Colors, a Jack and a July 31 Launch Date

OnePlus first teased the N6x’s silhouette and color options several weeks ago, in a piece that previewed a design echoing its own Nord line, before this week’s update filled in the remaining gaps. The company confirmed Burgundy Red and Ice Blue as the final color options, and official images show a vertically stacked rear camera module that mirrors the one on the Nord CE5, which launched in July 2025.

Look closely at the top edge of the device in those same images and there is a small circular cutout, a 3.5mm headphone jack, sitting next to the microphone and speaker grille. OnePlus hasn’t called it out in any marketing copy, but it is visible and unmistakable. A footer note on the phone’s official landing page adds one more detail: the N6x can reportedly deliver up to 2.5 days of battery life on a single charge.

Beyond that, OnePlus has stayed quiet. No chipset, no RAM, no confirmed price, just a design, two colors, a jack and a countdown to July 31 at 12 PM in India.

What We Know:

• Colors: Burgundy Red and Ice Blue, confirmed by OnePlus
• A 3.5mm headphone jack is visible in official reveal images
• A vertically aligned rear camera housing similar to the Nord CE5
• A landing-page claim of up to 2.5 days of battery life
• Launch date and time: July 31 at 12 PM IST in India

What’s Unconfirmed:

• Final price, with leaks ranging from roughly Rs 19,999 to Rs 20,999
• Chipset, with reports split between a Dimensity 6300 and the N6’s Dimensity 6360 Apex
• Battery capacity, with some leaks citing 8,000mAh and others 9,000mAh
• Whether the N6x sits above or below the OnePlus N6 in price

India’s Budget Buyers Are Running Out of Room

India’s smartphone shipments fell 10% year over year in Q2 2026, according to Counterpoint Research, the sharpest June-quarter decline the market has seen in six years. That followed a Q1 2026 that Counterpoint’s own research team described as the weakest quarter in six years, with shipments down 3% year over year amid rising cost pressures.

The culprit is memory. Component prices have risen sharply since last September, pushing smartphone makers into repeated rounds of price hikes through the first half of 2026. Entry-level and mass-market phones absorbed the worst of it, while brands leaning on premium, financed purchases held up better.

• 10% drop: India’s smartphone shipments fell that much year over year in Q2 2026, the steepest June-quarter decline in six years.
• Nearly 4x: how much memory and component costs have climbed since September 2025, based on Counterpoint’s tracking.
• 15% pricier: the average smartphone sold in India by the end of Q2 2026 compared with a year earlier.
• 13% projected: Counterpoint’s forecast for India’s full-year 2026 smartphone shipment decline.

That is the backdrop the N6x is walking into. A phone that keeps a free accessory (wired earbuds already in most drawers) and promises days of runtime instead of hours reads less like nostalgia and more like triage for buyers who are stretching every rupee.

Where Does the N6x Actually Sit Next to the N6?

OnePlus hasn’t confirmed where the N6x lands against the N6, but nearly every leak points to a phone priced under the N6’s Rs 22,999 (~$238) and built on very similar hardware. That would make the N6x the cheapest phone OnePlus has ever sold in India, arriving just weeks after a sibling that already claims that title today.

Two phones, one brand, overlapping specs and a price gap that may only be a few thousand rupees. If the leaks hold, OnePlus will have launched its cheapest-ever India phone twice in the space of a few weeks, once as the N6 and again as the N6x.

OnePlus Once Treated the Jack as a Matter of Principle

OnePlus didn’t always treat the headphone jack as an afterthought. In March 2018, co-founder Carl Pei publicly polled his followers on whether they liked headphone jacks. Most said yes, and the OnePlus 6 kept the port that year. Around the same launch window, Pei took a swipe at Apple’s framing of its own jack removal as bold design, writing that OnePlus was “proud to announce that we’re keeping the headphone jack” and that the company would “respectfully disagree on what it means to be courageous.”

Six months later, OnePlus reversed course. Announcing that the OnePlus 6T would ditch the jack, Pei told TechRadar that “you’ve got to make decisions that optimize the user experience, and understand that at times things that provide user value can also add friction.” He added that “we believe now is the right time, as it’ll benefit the majority of our users while keeping the downside low.”

The company’s stated justification leaned on adoption data: OnePlus said 59% of its user base already owned wireless headphones, up sharply from prior years, and framed the freed-up internal space as a route to better battery life and an in-display fingerprint reader. The jack never returned to a numbered OnePlus flagship after that.

Eight years and one budget sub-brand later, the same company is putting the port back, on a phone aimed at buyers for whom a spare pair of wireless earbuds is a real expense, not an afterthought.

One Country, Four Overlapping Phones

The N6x isn’t landing into an empty shelf. OnePlus is currently selling several phones within a roughly Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 band in India alone, and the N6x would squeeze in at the very bottom of that stack.

• OnePlus N6: Rs 22,999, Dimensity 6360 Apex, 8,000mAh battery, already on sale
• OnePlus N6x: leaked around Rs 19,999 to Rs 20,999, similar hardware to the N6, launching July 31
• OnePlus Nord CE5: Rs 24,999, Dimensity 8350 Apex, 7,100mAh battery, launched July 2025
• OnePlus Nord 5: starting at Rs 29,999, Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, launched alongside the Nord CE5

Notably, OnePlus already used a nearly identical battery pitch for the Nord CE5 last year, with hands-on reviewers describing its 7,100mAh cell as lasting “over a full day to nearly 2.5 days” under normal use. The N6x’s landing page repeats that same 2.5-day framing on a different chassis, which suggests OnePlus is leaning on a proven marketing line rather than a genuinely new differentiator.

The crowding isn’t accidental. OnePlus has pulled back sharply from other regions, and it has kept supporting existing owners after closing its US forum, even as it treats India as the one market that still gets new hardware every few weeks. Meanwhile, its next flagships face a murkier path into the country: reports suggest the OnePlus 16 and Oppo’s Find X10 Ultra may both skip an India launch altogether. The budget tier is where OnePlus is putting its India energy, and the N6x is the latest, smallest piece of that bet, competing against dominant local players. Vivo and Samsung have traded the top two shipment spots in India for much of 2026, according to Counterpoint’s tracking, leaving comparatively little room for a fourth or fifth overlapping OnePlus SKU to stand out on specs alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the OnePlus N6x’s price confirmed?

No. OnePlus has not announced pricing. Cashify’s tracking page pegs the base 4GB/128GB variant at roughly Rs 19,999, while Beebom’s estimate runs closer to Rs 20,999, and both remain unofficial until OnePlus confirms a figure at the July 31 launch.

Will the OnePlus N6x launch outside India?

Nothing points that way so far. OnePlus has been paring back new phone launches in North America and Europe while calling India its priority market, and the N-series, made up of the N6 and now the N6x, has so far stayed exclusive to India.

How is OnePlus’s N-series different from its Nord lineup?

The N-series sits below Nord on price. The N6 launched under Rs 23,000 as OnePlus’s cheapest India phone, while Nord models like the CE5 and Nord 5 start closer to Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000. That gives OnePlus three distinct India price tiers below its numbered flagships: N-series, Nord CE, and Nord.

Is the OnePlus N6x just a rebadged phone?

It might be close to one. Ahead of the reveal, Indian outlets reported that the N6x could reuse hardware already found in an existing OnePlus or Oppo device, and its design has been compared to the Nord CE 6 Lite. That has not been confirmed by OnePlus, but the pattern would fit a company reusing engineering across price tiers rather than building each phone from scratch.