Oneplus One

Introduction

From zero to flagship killer in less than 6 months. That's the life story of OnePlus Tech - a big chunk of which went in explanation mode. First it was their relation to Oppo, then the reasons why their debut smartphone got delayed - over and over. Social media hype and an elaborate invite system sent demand soaring through the roof and it's only now that OnePlus finally looks capable of catching up on pre-orders. It's time too for the full review to take off.

If Oppo wasn't clue enough, the OnePlus One isn't exactly trying to hide its resemblance to the Oppo Find 7 pair, particularly the 7a. The One looks like a chip off the not-so-old block with similarities running more than skin-deep. For starters, the displays have the same size and resolution (Find 7a), there's 3GB of RAM, 5MP front cams and 13MP main camera with UHD video.

OnePlus One official photos

Aside from the shared DNA with Oppo's Find series, the OnePlus One promises a Nexus feel and performance while beating the Nexus price. If it sounds like we're drunk, you don't know the OnePlus One. It costs just $350/€300 for the 64 gig version and it comes with top notch hardware to match the ample storage. The flipside is it's still quite hard to get.

OnePlus wants you to Never Settle and the One resonates with that - it doesn't skimp on hardware to offer the very best money can buy. The screen is big, bright and high-res, the chipset is top-notch, the camera is capable and even offers cinematic DCI 4k video, the battery and storage sound more than adequate and, to top it off, it comes with pure Android on steroids in the shape of CyanogenMod 11s. The 3GB of RAM will be cheered by heavy multitaskers.

Key features

5.5" 16M-color 1080 x 1920px IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen of 401ppi
Android OS 4.4.2 KitKat CyanogenMod 11s OS
Quad-core 2.5GHz Krait 400 CPU, 3GB of RAM, Adreno 330 GPU; Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset
13MP autofocus camera, dual-LED flash
2160p@30fps video, 2160p(DCI)@24fps, 1080@30fps, slow motion recording at 1080p@60fps and 720p@120fps
Dual speakers (not stereo)
16GB and 64GB storage options
3,100mAh battery
Active noise cancellation with a tri-mi setup
Aggressive pricing
Swappable back panels (including wooden ones)

Main disadvantages

Limited availability, slow to meet pre-orders, invitation-based purchasing
No headphones in the retail package
No 60fps normal speed videos (60fps videos are all slowed down)
No FM Radio
No IR port
Non-expandable storage (no microSD card slot)
The dual speaker setup is mono only
Sold exclusively online

So what are the downsides to an otherwise tempting package? For starters there's no FM Radio. Are we done? No. Okay. The OnePlus One is bulky and heavy to an extent that it can enter a fist fight with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. There's no such thing as one size fits all but OnePlus has gotten a little carried away - most people like a clear line drawn between phones and phablets.

Another issue is it's so hard to get, so you may have to pay extra to jump the queue. But with a little bit of patience and big hands you might really enjoy the OnePlus One. Opening the retail box of the OnePlus One will put a grin on your face - this device is cheap but doesn't look it, nor do the other box contents. And past the boot screen, a fast, streamlined interface awaits - one that's very close to what you'll find on a Nexus phone.

The screen is big and bright and fills the front from edge to edge pushing the bezels to the brink. And if you're still not sold, one look at the video settings will dispel any doubt - the UHD option is stuff only premium devices get these days.

OnePlus One live photos

But before we declare the OnePlus One the bargain of the year it will have more than a few points to prove. The next stop is the hardware checkup where we'll see what the One is made of, look closer at the screen and test the battery backup.

Minimalist retail package

The OnePlus One's packaging looks simple and yet, tasteful. It follows the OnePlus color scheme of white and red accents and has two separate boxes - one for the phone, microUSB cable and another for the A/C adapter.

Retail package

The microUSB cable is the most stylish accessory in the retail package. The flat cable is bright red and the USB plug (the one that connects to a host) is flat with exposed pins. The microUSB port looks as usual.

Finally, you get the proprietary pin for ejecting the SIM card tray. The pin has its own rubber vest that doubles as a keychain pendant.

Accessories

OnePlus One 360-degree spin

The OnePlus One is a big handset but overall size is reasonable, considering the screen is 5.5". The One isn't that much bigger than a Sony Xperia Z2 - which has dual speakers each side of a 5.2" screen. On the other hand, a Note 3 is a tad shorter and slimmer, with a 5.7" display diagonal.

The One's screen has minimal side bezels and the space top and bottom has been used with consideration. The OnePlus One has good ergonomics for a device with capacitive keys under the display. These can be disabled and you can opt for on-screen navigation buttons instead.

That said, the OnePlus One is well into phablet territory. At 152.9 x 75.9 x 8.9mm it's very tall and very wide - it's a little taller and thicker than a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (that has a 0.2" bigger display) and a good 6.6mm taller than the LG G3, which fits the same screen diagonal in a smaller frame.

The OnePlus One is a little lighter than the Galaxy Note 3, a lot lighter than the Oppo Find 7 and a lot heavier than the LG G3. It weighs 162g, which isn't intolerable but definitely something you'll feel.

Design and build quality

The design of the OnePlus One is very subtle with no flashy accents or excessive decoration. The front is clean and simple, even the three capacitive buttons under the screen are invisible when off and barely visible when on.

There's a silver, aluminum-like frame running around the front and sides of the OnePlus One that acts as a foundation for the screen, which sits slightly elevated over it, reminding us of the design of the Oppo Find 5, which too is a distant relative - and the first 1080p smartphone in the world.

OnePlus One design

Although built like a unibody smartphone the OnePlus One has a removable back cover. You'd need to eject the SIM tray first and then pry the cover off. You can put on any of the optional rear covers, including ones that look like wood or denim (for real!).

OnePlus One back panel

The cover of our review unit is very interesting - the finish is something we've never seen on a smartphone. It's matte and has plenty of grip, the texture looks a little like sand paper.

OnePlus has etched-out a logo on the back, under the camera lens and LED flash, the Cyanogen logo at the bottom.

OnePlus One around back

The edges of the One are very sharp, the sides flat, the overall shape quite reminiscent of the Oppo Find 5. The corners are subtly rounded and the back gently curved for a more comfortable feel in the palm.

The buttons of the OnePlus One are also thin and sharp - all adding up to the minimalist look and feel of the device. And while this is strictly the hardware chapter of the review we feel compelled to say that the software, right out of the box, complements the sharp, flat exterior of the One.

Controls and handling

Above the huge touchscreen are the earpiece in the center, a 5MP front-facing camera, proximity and ambient light sensors.

Under the display, three capacitive keys serve menu, home and back. The keys have very subdued backlighting, almost invisible under bright light, but they're sufficiently spaced and easy to hit without looking. You can also disable them in favor of on-screen buttons, a la stock Android.

Above and under the screen

On the left side, the OnePlus One has a volume rocker and the microSIM card tray above. The right side, at around thumb-height, has the power button and nothing else.

On the sides

The 3.5mm headphone jack sits at the top next to the noise-cancelling microphone. At the bottom we have the main microphone, the microUSB port and two speaker grilles that actually have speakers under them. The speakers don't offer stereo sound and we would have preferred them to be placed further apart, on different sides perhaps, even if not front mounted like on a Sony Xperia Z2 or an HTC One.

Top and bottom

Moving on to the back cover, the 13MP camera lens and a dual-LED flash share a metal plate dead center at the top. The plate has black matte finish, the actual glass covering the LEDs and lens slightly recessed to make it less vulnerable to scratches.

Interestingly there's a third microphone next to the camera lens - OnePlus is very proud of its tri-mic noise-cancelling setup.

On the back

Handling the OnePlus One is comfortable enough but you better have bigger hands, there's just no getting around that. OnePlus has done what it can to make the device feel nice in the palm, softening the corners a little. The flat sides favor a more secure hold but are harder to wrap your hand around.

The peculiar finish of the back cover offers almost unparalleled grip - almost completely ruling out accidental drops.

Handling the OnePlus One

The OnePlus One sits better in the hand than most devices with a display of this size, except the LG G3. That's saying a lot and we have to say OnePlus did a good job there. But at a certain point beyond the 5-inch barrier, you have to accept that a phone is just big.

Excellent 13MP camera

The OnePlus One comes with a 13MP snapper on the back coupled with a dual-LED flash to aid in low-light photography. On the front there's a 5MP snapper for selfies.

The OnePlus One shares the Sony-made Exmor IMX 214 1/3.06" CMOS sensor found in the Oppo Find 7 series with a bright f/2.0 aperture but lacks the 50 MP interpolation, the RAW shooting and the long shutter speed shooting modes. It does have HDR and Panorama, though.

The interface is CyanogenMod-made and features a large virtual shutter for stills, video and panorama as well as controls for switching the cameras, flash modes and shooting modes. There you'll find a long list of modes including Auto, HDR, Smart Scene and Beauty mode.

OnePlus One camera

Snapping photos is quick and easy and the One is fast to store them and move on to the next shot. More importantly, the quality of the images is amazing.

Looking at the samples we can see that the camera sensor isn't the only thing borrowed from the Oppo Find 7. The processing is also quite the same - it's laid back and looking all natural at the expense of slightly higher noise levels than we would normally see.

White balance tends to be spot on while colors are slightly more saturated than in real life but we like the effect. The contrast is also very impressive and images tend to look sharp edge to edge with very little softening and some geometric distortion in the extreme corners.

OnePlus One camera samples

The dynamic range is good but in some images it isn't great - the OnePlus One tends to leave the shadows underexposed while the highlights have sufficient exposure. It's hard to frown at OnePlus on the dynamic range as it seems the only real issue. There is some noise in the images, more so than we see with other flagship cameraphones but it comes at with the benefit of having higher resolved detail.

That's where the processing comes in. It seems OnePlus has left the noise reduction to a minimum in favor of detail preservation. While this leaves images slightly noisier than what we'd come to expect to see from smartphones in good light these days, images don't have that phone-like, overprocessed look at 1:1 magnification.

OnePlus One camera samples

So far so good - a great first impression by the OnePlus One. But here comes the first real complaint we have and it still has something to do with dynamic range. The HDR mode of the One does a good job of opening up the otherwise dark, underexposed areas of the image but it also bumps up the saturation or vividness of the colors to a ridiculous extent. Sound familiar? It does to us, we observed the same effect on the Oppo Find 7.

OnePlus One HDR Off • On

Greens and blues tend to be affected the most. Still the HDR samples have an interesting effect and may be seen as great for some HDR extremists, not us though.

OnePlus One HDR Off • On

As for the other shooting modes, there's also Macro mode, which allows you to get a little bit closer to your subject with the OnePlus One and helps resolve a good amount of detail. We were able to get as close as 10cm, which in turn helps get some separation from target to background resulting in a pleasant background blur.

OnePlus One marco

Panorama mode isn't very good on the One. It allows for very low-resolution panoramas and the detail is just very low. This is something we've seen with the built-in Android camera app - it can't produce good results as it maxes out at a very low resolution. You could do better if you go for a third party app, like Google's own Camera app.

OnePlus One panorama

And finally, here's sample from the front-facing 5 MP snapper. Compared to a regular 5MP sample, it may not blow you away with its quality, but we certainly find it much better than a lot of the alternatives on the market. We would've preferred if it were wider-angle so as to capture more of the frame, but anyways, it will do the job for selfies.

Front-facing 5 MP sample

We've included the OnePlus One samples in our photo quality comparison tool, you can pit the device against any rival in our database.

OnePlus One in our photo compare test

Overall, the OnePlus One produces very good images. The 13 MP resolution is high enough and the detail level leaves almost nothing to be desired. There is a little bit of noise but that's the consequence of the relatively small sensor and high resolution. We definitely like the laid back approach to processing that OnePlus has implemented as well.

4K DCI video is a first

The OnePlus One squeezes the most performance it can from the Sony sensor and the Qualcomm processor and offers 2160p (3840 x 2160px) video at 30 fps, as well as the so-called DCI 2160p (4096 x 2160p), which has a wider aspect, higher resolution and runs at cinematic 24 fps. As far as we know, this is also the first appearance of this popular 4K standard on a smartphone.

The usual capturing options are also here - there's 1080p at 30 fps as well as slow motion video at either 720p@120fps or 1080p@60fps - both slowed down with the latter slightly less so.

The camcorder interface is built into the camera one - this is what it looks like during recording.

Camcorder

The footage that comes from the OnePlus One is stunning. It produces incredible detail in good light and looks to be as good if not even better than Samsung and Sony's capture, overtaking LG's 4K-capable flagships easily.

The dynamic range is again only average with some shadow areas under-exposed. But otherwise things run very smooth and look incredibly detailed.

Final words

Devices that excel at everything usually fetch a hefty price but occasionally users will have a tougher riddle to solve. The OnePlus One is a great device with an even better price tag. You probably want it but can't get it. Bummer. This flagship killer's biggest problem is there may not be flagships left to kill by the time it's done handing out the invites.

Yet, the One is your kind of phone if you like surprises - and believe in delaying pleasure. It's the phone for Android purists and modders, running the highly customizable CyanogenMod with over the air updates.

If that's Android how you like it and phablet size isn't a deal-breaker, the One also comes with flagship-grade hardware at the price of a mini, at most. For $350/€300 you get Snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM, 4K video recording, a FullHD 1080p display and a whopping 64 gigs of storage - that's a respectable list by any standard.

Beyond the mechanical sum of specs, the OnePlus One truly handles well - the UI is buttery smooth, expected from a blend of pure Android and CyanogenMod, the screen is nice and sharp, the battery does well, the camera is excellent, the speakers are extra loud and the hardware costs more than they charge.

Here's a list of our other key test findings for the OnePlus One:

The display is good and quite bright, but the poor blacks cause an only average contrast ratio
Battery life is solid, especially call times
It benchmarks like a champ
The still camera is excellent and resolves plenty of detail
Video recording is second to none, and we don't say that only because of the great DCI 4K footage
Speakers are among the loudest we've tested (despite not being stereo)
Managed to play every video format we threw at it, including those with DTS and AC3 audio tracks

What it all comes down to is availability, which is actually an issue for most phones launching globally from China. OnePlus obviously cannot match the manufacturing capacity of bigger brands. The way they promote the phone is a double-edged sword - with a marketing budget of zero (the only way to sustain that asking price) they have managed to make this one of the most wanted phones. But it's uncertain how many of those queueing up will have the patience.

Then of course, there are the issues surrounding any potential warranty claims that you may have down the road. Without a network of service centers around, you'd have to send the phone back to China if there are any issues down the road. You'd have to factor in that risk and the potential hassle, too.

So let's look at what else you can get, not necessarily for the same amount of cash. Probably the only one that will fit into budget is the 16GB LG-made Nexus 5. It has the slightly less-powerful Snapdragon 800 chip, 2GB of RAM, a 5" 1080p display and stock Android with fast-track updates by Google.

The Nexus 5 will feel just as fast and responsive as the OnePlus One but will let you down in the imaging and battery department. The smaller screen might or not be held to its advantage.

LG Nexus 5

Next up we have the obvious rivals from Oppo. The OnePlus One's stepbrother, the Find 7a, has almost the same display, cameras and chipset. It does have a gig of RAM less and opts for Oppo's ColorOS instead of CyanogenMod. The Find 7 matches the OnePlus One on chipset and RAM, has the same camera setup and overall feel but the display resolution is higher at QHD. Each in that pair is more expensive though.

Oppo Find 7 • Oppo Find 7a

It's getting way more serious with the LG G3 at near double price. For that you get a 5.5" display of QHD resolution, an OIS-equipped 13MP camera with hybrid auto focus and a feature-rich custom skin.

LG G3

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is more compact than the OnePlus One, and way more expensive as well. Its screen is smaller but matches the resolution and offers outstanding colors and contrast - that Super AMOLED unit is probably the best screen in the market. The water-resistant S5 has a fingerprint scanner and perhaps the longest list of software features around.

Samsung Galaxy S5

The Sony Xperia Z2 probably comes closest of the current flagships to the OnePlus One's asking price, but still not close enough. It has a 1080p display, but it's smaller, and it is powered by the less powerful Snapdragon 801 variety. The aluminum-and-glass build, water resistance, 3GB of RAM and stereo speakers are its key assets.

Sony Xperia Z2

The OnePlus One is a package that's really hard to resist - almost stock Android with premium specs at a price that's near impossible to beat. It's not what true believers will call a leap of faith but even some of them are probably thinking it.

Oppo's involvement - or lack thereof (OnePlus at one point denied being owned by Oppo, but there's plenty of evidence leading that way) - will actually help boost the startup's credentials. But still, it's the first phone of a company with no track record. And it's a company that is having trouble meeting pre-orders nonetheless.

A leap of faith it may be, yet so far the One looks like it's worth it. Cyanogen is onboard and that kinda guarantees regular updates, Android L already confirmed. The build is great, the hardware is top-notch, you get solid still imaging and great video, adequate battery backup and CyanogenMod.

By our books, that's good enough for a self-professed flagship killer. At that price though - one can already smell flagship fear. Now or whenever that invite comes through