The OnePlus Nord design has been revealed in an online video by chief Carl Pei. The move is somewhat unexpected considering it's a week before the launch of the mid-range phone.

Despite OnePlus working to keep its upcoming Nord handset under wraps and working on a precisely-engineered teaser campaign, it then decided to throw all that out of the window in favour of a video with YouTuber Marques Brownlee. 

"So we did something you're usually not allowed to do," said Pei. "Which is, we changed design really late in the process. And that caused the entire project to be delayed by around a month. And the reason why we did this is because in the beginning, we saw this new product line as more of an experiment.

"But as we were looking into the data and consumers, we realised that this would be a really good opportunity that we would sell a lot more phones than we originally envisioned.

"So then we had to really rethink our design strategy. Are we doing this as an experiment? If it's an experiment, then we can be much more daring with our industrial design? We can try this camera setup that looks really unique – an ‘L’ shaped camera setup.

"But if we want to sell a lot of phones, we want to target a much broader user base. We need to make sure that it's immediately recognisable as a OnePlus phone.

"We [now] have the same you know camera setup vertical camera setup that you see on other OnePlus phones. We have the same tapered edges on the back of the phone. It really reminds you of the OnePlus design philosophy."