It’s not the span of the boat, it’s the motion in the ocean.
This can be rightly said about the relatively new beast in the market. OnePlus has kept us wondering for a while now about how can high end phones come out to be this cheap. The company claims to produce not flagships but ‘Flagship Killers’ and so far,they have been right about what they claim. With the latest increment in the OnePlus lineage, we have a new badass phone in town. The phone has been named following the tradition the company keeps from its early origin. The company became a success because of an ‘Invite System’ that grabbed a lot of attention for the company. Carl Pei plans to alter the approach now and says that "As a company grows, expectations change and we have to be more responsible of a company. We just couldn’t sell on an invite system at this point in the company’s history." If you find this phone good enough, you can have it directly from the OnePlus Website. Ladies and Gents, This year’s OnePlus phone might stand out to be the best out of this company yet. Pei, the 26-year old co-founder claims that the phone is a competition to the flagships of this generation in terms of specs. Behold, the OnePlus Three.
Design and Dimensions
The finesse of the design is quite evident as you raise it in your hand. The OnePlus is an extremely sturdy device. The Aluminum unibody feels premium and is incredibly well built. The phone is a definite improvement over the OnePlus Two’s design. Keeping the fact in mind that although the phone is approximately the same size as the OnePlus Two, it is lighter and feels a lot more balanced. The Design is nothing new, it feels ripped off from both HTC and Huawei but it definitely strikes a great balance between Beauty and Power. The phone is152.7mm long and 74.7 mm wide. The thickness of the phone has decreased drastically from the previous model. The phone is not the thinnest in the market but it definitely is sleeker than a lot of flagship phones excelling in the market. The phone is about 7.4 mm thick. The All metal matte finish looks and feels premium. There are connectivity bands located on the back which seems to have been taken from the iPhone 6s. The button placements on the device are all subtle and clean. The toggle placed on the side allows you to switch to silent mode and back with little effort. This phone overall hails design as one of its biggest selling point.
Display
The OnePlus Three has a 5.5 inch display classified to be a Super AMOLED which operates at a mildly high resolution of 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels which makes up a relatively low pixel density of 401ppi. The screen is positively rich and feels great on the eyes.Although a low pixel density when compared to any other flagship, the difference on a screen this vibrant can only be felt when you observe closely. The screen feels pretty neat and plays everything you throw at it without exception. The device exhibits impressive viewing angles just about anywhere indoors. There were problems viewing the screen outdoors when the brightness was not rocked to full. The text on the screen was barely visible when brightness was not rocked to maximum. The blacks are never bleached out and the phone does really well squeezing out every color in the color pallet. The display feels vibrant and pretty color accurate but when compared to the other smartphone giants, the video quality looks a bit less refined owing to the very high pixel density found on some devices like the HTC 10. The screen is something you can definitely live with.
Sound
The device provides decent experience but it does not blow you away. The phone carries a traditional speaker at the bottom of the device which can be covered easily. The phone does not dazzle away with its one speaker. The sound coming out of the device is quite loud but it never compares to what you call surround sound. The speaker grill is heavily exposed to hands covering it almost all times in my case. There is 3.5 mm headphone jack at the bottom of the phone making it pretty standard. The speakers on the phone are definitely good but they simply fail to turn heads.
Specifications
The OnePlus definitely checks most of the things on a specifications sheet. The OnePlus is hailed as a ‘People’s Phone’ with a blazing fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip working miracles under the screen. The phone has a Dual-core 2.15 GHz Kryo and a dual-core 1.6 GHz Kryo processor in its CPU chipset summing up to make a Quad-core device. The Adreno 530 GPU rendering makes your experience more immersive and lag free than ever before. Ever since the chip has boasted the capacity to put in 6GB RAM, I’ve been waiting for a device that completely utilizes the slot. The OnePlus is crowned to be the first phone to come with a massive 6GB under the hood. The whopping 6GB RAM allows a great deal of multitasking with the device. All these perks allow this device fly high on the benchmark tests. It ships with an internal storage 64 GBs. As a cherry on top, the OnePlus Three is a dual SIM phone which amounts for more connectivity. A drawback to the device is its lack of expansion in terms of storage. Although 64 GB is a mouthful for most of the standard users, more storage is always a pleasant option. The phone is protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass 4 which allows the device to stand scratches. The OnePlus Three is as premium form inside as it is from outside. The device provides a snappy experienceand never fails to miss out on tap tic feedback. The phone is responsive and will stay that way no matter what you run on the device owing to a gigantic 6GB RAM. There is a fingerprint sensor embedded in the physical button on the front which is quite fast coming second only to the new iPhones.
Camera
The Camera on the device are no big gambles but a solid bunch of choices that round up to produce a nice camera on a device. The device rocks a 16 MP camera on the back with an aperture of f2.0. The device also has Optical Image Stabilization and Phase detection autofocus for better and faster focus. The camera app opens up pretty fast and provides a pretty decent experience. The images coming out of this camera are vibrant and color accurate. There seems to be a little saturation to be at play but the images seem to stand out and feel crisp and nice. The images seem to be exposed to lighting a bit which makes dark colors lose their actual aura in broad daylight but the images feel nice and decent overall. The phone performed pretty admirably in low light making the camera better than a lot of other phones. Not to forget the 8 MP front camera which takes pretty ambient and crisp selfies for you making it this phone a complete package. The phone has a camera bump which is annoying as the phone never settles easy on any surface but that is no biggie. The camera on the device gets our approval.
Software
The phone feels pretty stock android but has some minor changes to it. It ships with Android Marshmallow v6.0.1 with a layer of software tweaks on top. OnePlus have named their software the Oxygen OS. The software sure is refreshing as its name. The OS has little to no bloat-ware making the device hassle-free and easy to get used to. The phone handles multitasking quite amiably and strikes a massive score in multi-tasking. The softwareowing its share to the battery performance does its job pretty nicely and provides a nice battery optimization which accounts for a greater usage time. The phone feels quite like the stock Android with a little modifications to the way it looks. Everything else happens quite smoothly and the device never lags. The godly RAM helps a lot in this matter. This phone will not stop no matter what you throw at it.
Battery Performance
The OnePlus Three boasts a massive Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery. The OnePlus Three stood firm for 15-16 hours with all battery hungry things like display, navigation, background app refreshing and Facebook on. This equates to a pretty decent battery. The Dash Charging allows you to charge your device in full throttle. With fast charging on your back, the device is always an hour away from being up and ready again. The 4 Ampere Charger builds up your battery to 60 percent in almost half an hour. Although more battery would have been appreciated. The battery on this device is pretty decent and plays pretty well. Due to the metal on the back, you don’t get wireless charging out of this package but for a price factor this low, you can’t really expect everything.
Price Group
The Company has surprised everyone in the past for offering high-end specs in a price range of mid-phones. This year is no exception. The phone is all set to go for 27,999 Indian Rupees. The device sells for just $399 which allows you to go easy on your pocket but not on the dream of owning a perfect phone. The price range makes us think to buy two instead of one. OnePlus presents a lucrative deal and have a definitely brought a ‘Smartphone Killer’ out. This is a phone which you must consider. With a price this low, all is good with this phone.
Final Verdict
Ranging from the feel of this device to the performance, the device hails worthy in all departments. The OnePlus Three is a complete package which looks as premium as any high end phones and manages to crush all of them with a price tag this low. This phone is definitely a worthy upgrade from the early OnePlus Two. The beast definitely stands quite high on the benchmarks and provides the user with a fluid interface. All set, the device is bundled with cherries like fingerprint sensor and fast charging. All these things make the device a complete package in a price really low. This phone is a charm and is a significant step to high end cheap phone. Kudos.