OnePlus has a habit of discontinuing their previous flagships as soon as they launch a new line of devices.
All that will change this year. At least, for the first half of the year.
The CEO of the company, Pete Lau, has confirmed via Weibo that the company will maintain the OnePlus 8 line of units at the same time as the OnePlus 9. This means that customers willing to get in on the OnePlus 8/ 8T/ 8 Pro can still walk into an authorised outlet to pick up a new pack.
There are two ways to look at this.
For one, the company might not have made its sales targets for the last year and want to continue selling this unit so that they can add up the numbers. The coronavirus pandemic did slow down a lot of sales from last year so that would be an understandable stance from them.
On the other hand, they might be keeping the devices to compete with other affordable flagship devices in the market.
Those who are willing and able can get any of the new OnePlus 9 units. For those that do not need all that power and performance, or do not have the money to splash on the newcomers, they can always have any of the OnePlus 8 series to call theirs.