OnePlus may have been busy sending out invites to potential customers who have patiently waited to receive one in their emails. However, one fan managed to successfully jump ahead in the queue and became number 1,694, a huge leap from being number 335,000.
OnePlus said that this year, it is sending as many as 50 times the number of invites it sent out last year during the initial phase of the OnePlus One's launch. The first lucky recipients of the invites are the ones who won the contest or have participated in promoting the company.
Second in the line of recipients are those who are friends of users who have a OnePlus 2 handset. OnePlus 2 owners reportedly get a certain number of invites, which they can pass around to friends, relatives, or anybody of their choice.
When all of these invites have been sent out and there are extra invitations that are left, those extras will be distributed to those who have registered under the company's OnePlus invitation system, which has now reached more than one million. Sending out the invitations will go on until "supplies" last.
One fan, identified as Jake Cooper, promised to himself that this time around he would receive an invite. He recalled how he was able to buy the OnePlus One last year by using the invitation from a random individual on XDA who sold it to him for $20. After entering his invitation request early for the OnePlus 2, he was able to land at number 9,000 in the queue. However, he got disappointed when, after checking his status again after some time, his number slid from 9,000 to 70,000. He also noticed that his ranking continued to drop even further.
Armed with a strong determination to win the race, Jake used his unique skills on the Internet to find a flaw in the invite system, which allowed him to defy his current ranking of 335,000 and land on the highly desirable number of 1,694, which is even better than the first ranking that he earned.
"When the OnePlus 2 rolled around, I made sure to be on the ball and put my email in early and secured position 9,000. However, with the invites for the OnePlus 2, OnePlus opted to allow users to jump the queue by referring their friends to the invite waitlist. Last night I checked my invite status and I was [in] position 70,000," says Jake in a Medium blog post.
Jake already informed OnePlus of the vulnerability by sending out a tweet. So far, OnePlus hasn't responded to him.
