These days, very few smartphone launches excite people enough to queue up for hours in the street. Apple's iPhones are pretty much the exception to the rule.
Yet on a warm, sticky day in central London, more than 200 people snaked around the streets outside the SwiftKey offices near London Bridge just to get a glimpse at the OnePlus 2, a smartphone few have even heard of.
Key Features
5.5in display (1920 x 1080)
Snapdragon 810/ 4GB RAM
9.85mm/175g
USB-C port
OxygenOS (based on Android 5.1)
13MP/5MP cameras
Dual SIM
Fingerprint sensor
Price: £239
Release date: 11 August (with invite)
The long queue – and the one million-plus people who have registered interest in the OnePlus 2 online – is testament to the hype the company generated on the back of the surprising success of the OnePlus One, which launched 15 months ago and sold 1.5 million units.
OnePlus 2 is selling its second smartphone (as it did its first) as a "flagship killer", and not only the flagship models from Apple and Samsung out now but the ones coming in 2016 too.
OnePlus 2: Design
Bulky and heavy were my initial thoughts when I saw the specs announced for the OnePlus 2. At 9.5mm and 175g, is it heavier and thicker than the iPhone 6 Plus and Galaxy S6. But holding it, the first thing that came to mind was how solid it felt.
OnePlus has added a touch of premium-build quality with a metal frame around the edge, but the rear cover remains plastic – though there are alternative covers you can get with various finishes such as wood and sandstone, which is a bit like a fine sandpaper.
The phone has a large 5.5in screen but it is significantly shorter than the cumbersome iPhone 6 Plus as well as being narrower, which makes it much easier to use one-handed, though it is still a pretty big phone.
New technology is a wonderful thing, but waiting to get it into your hands can be maddening. It's all very well when Nikon launches a compact camera or Sony a new version of the PSP, but take it beyond the realm of consumer hardware and that lag time can go on forever.
So, while we're spending time during Future Week looking at things that have barely been thought of and things that never made it, today is the turn of the technologies still waiting for their moment in the sun. Here's our take on five that have arrived today, but will probably only have made the splash they meant to by 2015.
The idea of WiMax has been around for so long now, that it almost feels like a backward concept. Kicking around as a telecommunications standard since 2001,
