OnePlus 3 Review

The OnePlus 3 is the third from the Chinese manufacturer OnePlus. A company with claims of making flagship killers and a tagline that says “Never Settle”. However, the fist two phones have been compromised in one way or another, even though the OnePlus One was an impact maker, the Oneplus Two failed to deliver on promises. The OnePlus 3 is being projected as a true flagship killer, and while there are many reasons why this statement may be true, Let’s Find out in our Review if this stands True!

Initial Thoughts

One Month in and the OnePlus 3 is still pretty important to people, that says a lot about the positioning of the brand and the value it delivers with the OnePlus 3. The Oneplus 3 is the first phone from OnePlus to be sold entirely without invites or flash sales of any kind. Which does away with one of the biggest issues with owning a OnePlus handset. The phone is available outright all over the world with a price of US $ 399, in India the company launched the phone for Rs. 27999.

Build Quality and Design

The OnePlus 3 holds the best build quality of the Oneplus line of phones. An all metal shell that reflects a lot upon design and materials from the lineup of HTC phones and it is no way a bad thing. HTC has been one of our favorite manufacturers, and their build quality is a primary reason.

The front of the phone houses Gorilla Glass 4. However, you will only get a protection lip if you buy one of their covers. The included screen protector gets scratched easily and it is recommended that you replace your layer quickly.

We have no complaints with the OnePlus 3 design, in fact, we appreciate it a lot and it speaks a lot about what the company has learnt in the past three years. That being said we are still waiting for the gold color. The fact that the phone is metal, means that dents will be easy to get and so will be scratches.

Hardware

Hardware wise, OnePlus has left only one aspect behind, and pumped the rest of the OnePlus with the best meat on the market. The OnePlus 3 short of display resolution, features top of the line specifications and then some. Snapdragon 820 with a whopping 6 GB of RAM along with a standard 64 GB storage and 16 Mp and 8MP camera combinations.

Performance and Gaming

With the latest update just about a month from the launch, OnePlus took care of a lot of the initial snags faced by the handset. Memory management is a whole lot improved, even though we didn’t really face any issues initially.

Scoring upwards of 140,000 in Antutu benchmark, the OnePlus 3 proves that you don’t need an expensive handset to get the power you desire. In fact, it scores the 1st place at the moment on Antutu with a score of 143532 without any mods.

6 GB of RAM is an overkill and OnePlus basically did it to draw attention towards the phone, with no real use of so much standby memory, it just makes the memory hungry apps last out longer. It does give a free buffer to multitask and allow for games to utilise this memory. At any time, however, there is usually awards of 3 GB of RAM free.

OnePlus may launch a 4 GB variant of the OnePlus 3 much like the LeMax 2, which would make more sense for an ordinary consumer and would also bring down the price by about Us $ 60.

Usual bits of daily use are good after one month of use, and especially good after the software update which tends to smooth things out. Switching between apps is easy and quick and the phone plays well when you push it to the limit.

Multimedia and Camera

The AMOLED display is excellent and really puts vibrancy into the OnePlus 3. When compared to the dull display on the OnePlus 2 the OnePlus 3 really shines in this department. Media consumption is excellent on the handset which offers good viewing angles and bucket loads of brightness indoors and outdoors.

There is only one speaker on the phone and its sharp but sounds tinny.  The audio levels are also average and not the best we have seen. You will find yourself looking for portable speakers or headphones to use this handset. Audio through the headphone jack is good and punchy. Also worth noting is the fact that this phone does, in fact, have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Something the Chinese siblings are missing in anticipation of Apple getting rid of it.

HDR and HD mode you will find yourself capturing some great outdoor shots. The usual OnePlus filters are also available and appreciated in the camera app. The camera is genrally faster, sharper and more detailed in capturing images and video.

A full manual mode allows you to customize and set up your shot if you are a photography nerd. The ability to store RAW lets you get a lot more from the images, and removing the processing engine from the smartphone and shifting it to you PC.

Colors and Contrast is on point and saturation is just right. Mostly outdoor images are excellent with the indoor images coming out good to average.

Oxygen OS

With Cyanogen completely out of the picture, a proprietary OS which has the same feel of Cyanogen developed in-house is a fantastic idea. A fast and smooth near- stock UI with basic customizations works well for the OnePlus 3.

You have the shelf which sits to the left of the home screen, which you can disable in case you don’t want it. you also get the ability to switch to a dark theme, or a light theme, among various other detailed customizations. A gesture setup allows you to launch the camera, enable the flashlight or control your music from a locked phone.

The operating system is now updated frequently to resolve bugs, and improve performance. Hopefully the transition to Android Nougat will not be as long as it was to Android Marshmallow , which happened earlier this year.

Phone and Battery Life

The OnePlus 3 will take in two nano SIM cards and will work with essentially LTE and 4G networks in the region it is designed for. The Snapdragon 820 chip is quite versatile and a wide array of bands are well supported with the OnePlus 3.

The Network strength is good and so is phone call capability with little effect on the battery life. The earpiece is a tad bit low in volume, but not enough to be bothersome. The microphone is sensitive and noise cancellation good. Overall phone capability stands in the good to excellent region.

Battery life is average on the OnePlus 3, with just a 3000 mAh battery and a lot going on, the OnePlus 3 will require frequent recharges, and its recommended that you carry the Dash Charger. We find the charging living up to its name and claim. After a month the OnePlus 3 still charges quickly and crosses 60% in about 30 minutes.

Talk Time : 4.5 Hours

Browsing : 3-4 Hours

Music Playback : 14 Hours

Video : 5 Hours

The OnePlus 3 still deals with the heating issues, if you launch the camera in your pocket, you will find a blazing inferno in your pants, to avoid this keep the camera gesture disabled and the fingerprint sensor-enabled.

Conclusion

The OnePlus 3 fixes all its earlier nags, it looks great and performs better. The OnePlus 3 does have NFC and a brilliant AMOLED display. The metal build is appreciated and so are the material covers that allow you to go back to sandstone or even the wood finish that everyone wanted on the original OnePlus One. The OnePlus 3 is probably the only phone in this price bracket that is worthy of a recommendation over handsets like the S7 Edge and HTC 10, however, there is a big catch.

HTC and more importantly Samsung now are vetrans in the smartphone business, not only are their phones more reliable they are more robust in day to day usage. The Galaxy S7 is considered the best phone from Samsung, and we personally love the HTC 10. The OnePlus 3 is an excellent replacement if you dont want to spend that much.