OnePlus Three...................
OnePlus finally has a genuine flagship killer thinks John McCann.
The Nexus is dead, the Pixel is overrated, can the OnePlus Three take the place of the phone to have for open source hackers or is it just a nice bit of kit?
Third time’s a charm, right? Well, that’s what OnePlus will be hoping with its third-generation flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 3. True to its ‘Never Settle’ mantra, OnePlus is pushing forward with its ‘flagship specs for half the price’ game plan and with the new OnePlus 3 the signs are positive.
There’s no QHD resolution, nor is there a microSD slot, and users have just one internal storage option: 64GB. But if you can look past those minor shortcomings, and embrace the power, premium design and performance the OnePlus 3 is offering, this is the firm’s best-ever device.
With a Snapdragon 820 processor, 6GB of RAM, 16MP rear camera, 8MP front snapper, fingerprint scanner and 3,000mAh fast-charging battery, the OnePlus 3 has the tools – on paper at least – to take on the big names.
The single biggest advancement is the design, OnePlus has answered fan’s calls for a more premium design, delivering its first metal uni-body smartphone in the OnePlus 3, cut from a single slab of aluminium. The fingerprint scanner is much quicker at recognising your digits and unlocking the OnePlus 3 than it was on the OnePlus 2, with a quoted time of just 0.3 seconds. OnePlus says it’s faster than Apple’s Touch ID, and we’re inclined to agree with that.
It retains its dual-SIM capabilities, but offers no microSD slot; the second SIM slot in the likes of the Huawei P9 doubles as a microSD slot. OnePlus explain this away as a design decision.
There’s no QuadHD display here—something many ‘flagship’ handsets boast. It’s stuck with a 5.5inch full HD panel on the OnePlus 3, but it has at least moved to an AMOLED panel, giving you brighter, punchier colours with a dual-polarising layer for outdoor viewing.
Packed with power
OnePlus says its 16MP camera makes it hard to take a bad photo, with auto HDR, Phase Detection AutoFocus and Dynamic De-noise. You can also capture photos in RAW format, and the manual mode allows you greater control over settings such as ISO, white balance and shutter speed.
The OnePlus 3 is absolutely packed full of power. Qualcomm’s top of the range Snapdragon 820 processor is joined by a huge amount of RAM: 6GB! Performance is very good, with smooth navigation and swift app load times— but it doesn’t set itself apart from the pack. Running the Geekbench 3 returned a multi-core score of 5,425, placing the handset in the middle of 2016’s flagships. It also comfortably beats the OnePlus 2 (4795) and iPhone 6S (4417) from 2015.
Even with moderate use, most days I found myself switching on the Battery Saver as I hit 15% come early evening. Our 90-minute HD video test saw the battery drop 23%, which is average. Quick charging is a big thing and the Dash Charge technology can replenish half the battery in half an hour. To work the phone does require the supplied charger and thicker USB C cable.
NFC also makes a return as it enables Android Pay contactless payments. Android 6 is coupled with its own Oxygen interface and OnePlus provides tools for easy rooting, alternative bootloaders and there’s active CyanogenMod OS development in its favour. At the time of writing, the OnePlus 3T was also launched with an improved battery, CPU and various storage options, albeit for £70 more than the OnePlus 3.