High spec at budget price, excellent screen, very fast processor, fine camera, 4G
Software can be a bit buggy, no expandable memory
From a company that didn't even exist a year ago, the OnePlus One offers high-end spes at a mid-range price, with the intention of blasting a serious hole in the established order. It's got the hype, but has it got the skills to take on the big names and beat them, while still charging less?
Chassis & screen
This is a big phone, but at 153x76x9mm and weighing a perfectly reasonable 162g it's much easier to handle than outsize phablets like the HTC One Max or Sony Xperia Z Ultra. The key thing is that you can still use it one-handed -- just about -- without discomfort, and for most people that matters.
It looks like a premium piece of kit, with Corning Gorilla Glass reaching to the edges which are lined with a thin strip of chrome.
But it's the rear casing that marks it out as different. It's made of a kind of rough-edged rubberised plastic that we haven't seen on a smartphone before. It's grippy, but soft to the touch and really rather nice. You can remove it, but there's not much point -- there's no memory card port tucked away in there and the battery is fixed in place. OnePlus has a range of replaceable covers coming too apparently, in wood, and denim-style designs, which will further add to its distinctiveness.
That 5.5-inch IPS LCD screen reaches almost all the way out to the sides of the phone, and delivers an impressive resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels (401ppi) -- full HD, which will keep you smiling through just about any task, though a few phones are going beyond that these days like LG's new G3, with 2,560x1,440 pixels. The colours are bright and vibrant, and if blacks aren't quite as rich and deep as you'll find on Samsung's OLED screens for example, it's still an impressive effort. It's sensitive to the touch and viewing angles are really good too, making it easy to share.
Software and operation
As for the operating system, it's Android, but not as we know it.
CyanogenMod is based on Android though, and the icon-based layout looks familiar, even if the icons themselves don't. The style of the icons is simple almost to a fault, and they appear to owe a little to Windows Phone with their (mostly) square tile symmetry.
So far, so similar to the styling we've seen from the likes of Sony, HTC and Samsung, which have all applied their own touches to the standard Android interface. But what makes CyanogenMod different is that there's a lot more you can do to tweak the interface yourself. You can download new themes from Google Play, some of which cost and some of which are free. Finding them is made easy by using the on-board Themes Showcase.
It's not just the look and feel of the interface you can change either. You can also customise the press settings for your soft keys (long, short, double etc), vary your settings displays and more. So you can fiddle away to your heart's content, if that's your bag. And if it's not, hey, just ignore it and use it more or less like standard Android.
CyanogenMod worked very well, but there did seem to be a few buggy niggles that need to be ironed out. When we were testing the processor with a spot of Real Racing 3, there was no way to get out of the game except by switching the phone off -- the back and home buttons had mysteriously become disabled. There were a few incidences like this, including a similar, one-off incident with the camera. Nothing major, and probably likely to expunged in future updates.
Processor
The quad-core processor is clocked at 2.5GHz and backed by a mighty 3GB RAM, which is a pretty impressive amount of power. Sure enough, it was impressively sprightly in use, opening apps in a trice and maintaining many of them at once without showing any sign of lag or delay. Hi-res gaming was a breeze too. The graphics in
Real Racing 3 look as smooth as we've ever seen them, and the effects in Dead Trigger 2 are even more immersive than when we've played the same game on lesser phones.
Our AnTuTu benchmark test gave it a score of 37,547 -- the highest we've yet seen. That's higher than the LG G Flex, higher than the Galaxy S5. This is a powerful phone.
Photography
The 13-megapixel camera is impressive too. It comes with auto-focus and a nice, bright dual LED flash. There's no dedicated camera button but that's no great loss, and you can set a variety of modes and focus options. It doesn't have the Carl Zeiss lenses found on Nokia's pricier Windows Phone devices, and it doesn't have as many editing and tweaking options as recent offerings from Samsung, HTC or Sony, but it does deliver solidly capable pics that have good colour balance, are nicely sharp and offer a decent level of detail.
It shoots 1080p video as standard though you can also upgrade it to 4K if you feel the need. There's a 5-megapixel camera on the front for video calls too, which is about as good as it gets these days. There's no microSD card slot, but it does come in a choice of 16GB or 64GB versions, which should be enough for everyone. A big phone needs a big battery, and the One's 3,100mAh model does a pretty good job considering the high spec -- it'll easily last you through a day and more of heavy use.
Conclusion
With a single bound, the OnePlus One is catapulted into the big leagues, holding its own against the high-end likes of the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One (M8) and Sony Xperia Z2. But it's only a little over half the price of any of those. This is a seriously impressive phone, especially at this price. There may be a few bugs in the software, but we didn't come across any major issues, and in terms of capability, appearance and even distinctiveness, it's right up there with the best of them. What the Moto G did for the budget end of the market, providing impressive specs for a previously unseen price, the OnePlus One is now doing for the high end. The big boys had better watch their backs.
Software: CyanogenMod 11S based on Android 4.4
Processor: Quad-core 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801
Memory slot: No
Display: 5.5-inch JDI, 1920x1080 pixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports: microUSB, 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera: 13-megapixel with auto-focus, 4x digital zoom; 5 megapixel front-facing camera
Video playback: MP4, H.263, H.264, RMVB, FLV720P
Audio playback: MP3, AAC, AMR, OGG, M4A, MID, WMA, FLAC, APE, AAC, WAV
Radio: Yes
Battery: 3100mAh
Size: 153x76x9mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
