Pei would oversee the design and marketing of OnePlus' products until his departure from the company in October 2020, going on to found the consumer electronics manufacturer Nothing.

OnePlus Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. was founded on 16 December 2013 by former Oppo vice-president Pete Lau and Carl Pei.

The name "OnePlus" originates from and encapsulates this same philosophy, with "1" representing the status quo and the "+" the desire to improve upon it, as well as the ambition to share good products with the world.

[13][14] Lau also showed aspirations of being the "Muji of the tech industry", emphasizing its focus on high-quality products with simplistic, user-friendly designs.

[11] Continuing Lau's association with the platform from the Oppo N1,[12] OnePlus entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Cyanogen Inc. to base its products' Android distribution upon a variant of the popular custom ROM CyanogenMod and use its trademarks outside of China.

It differed from its competitors—largely flagship devices from larger phone manufacturers, in its usage of CyanogenOS, its openness to developers, and its price-to-performance ratio in comparison to its hardware, although criticism was levied for technical issues.

In order to reduce marketing costs, OnePlus relied instead on word of mouth and initially only allowed purchases via an invite system.

[19] In 2015, OnePlus began an effort to expand in Southeast Asia, making its products available in the region for the first time, partnering with Lazada Indonesia in January 2015.

[22][23] In 2021, Oppo and OnePlus would begin to build a partnership, combining their hardware research teams in January of that year.

The company also started assembling smartphones locally and announced that it would begin to sell its full range of products in the country.

They have seemingly been discontinued as the Chinese maker has removed the segment (including its India-exclusive Monitors) from its official Indian website.

[40] OnePlus Playback is a series of music videos in collaboration with popular Indian singers, beginning in 2018.

This received major backlash for objectifying and degrading women, resulting in the contest being pulled within hours.

The throttling was uncovered by an investigation done by AnandTech, discovering that the OnePlus 9 significantly diminished the performance of Chrome in an effort to "improve battery life".