The 2022 flagship smartphone season is over and, with Qualcomm announcing its 2023 flagship chip — the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — the race is on for next-gen Android flagships to hit the market. The OnePlus 11 has already been confirmed to feature Qualcomm's latest chip and be among the first to launch. Now, more details about the phone have surfaced online, detailing its use of speedy UFS 4.0 storage, packing oodles of RAM, and its build quality.

In a Weibo post, leaker Digital Chat Station claims OnePlus's next phone will feature UFS 4.0 storage. Announced in May 2022, the latest bump in the flash storage standard brings a massive leap in sequential read/write speeds while also allowing chips to be smaller and more efficient. Samsung says UFS 4.0 NAND chips provide double the sequential read and write speeds over UFS 3.1, with speeds reaching up to 4,200MB/s and 2,800MB/s, respectively. Despite all this extra performance, UFS 4.0 is said to be 46% more power efficient than the previous generation.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is the first platform from Qualcomm to support UFS 4.0, which explains why the storage chip did not make its way into any of the 2022 flagships launched in the year's second half. The faster storage chip should lead to a noticeable speed boost in many use cases including speedier app launch times, quicker boot speeds, and lower app installation times.

OnePlus also seemingly plans on offering up to 16GB RAM for its upcoming flagship, though it should be reserved for the high-end storage variant. The leaker further asserts the phone will stick with a curved-edge display, marked with a hole punch selfie camera on the left. OnePlus 11 renders have already made their way to the internet, so its design is not a mystery at this point.

The original leak claimed the OnePlus 11 could feature a ceramic body with a metal frame, but another reliable leaks writer, Max Jambor, says this won't be the case. A ceramic body could help OnePlus's next flagship smartphone stand out from the competition. Last year, the OnePlus 10 Pro launched in China right at the beginning of the year and made its global debut a couple of months later. We expect the OnePlus 11 to also follow a similar launch timeframe.