Catching attention for the third time in its third straight year is OnePlus with another “flagship killer” the 4 – I mean the OnePlus 3. Released June 2016, this well-known, sometimes infamous, startup decided to listen to what most of its loyal customers wanted on a phone. Was it enough to please its audience? Let’s find out in our in-depth review of the OnePlus 3.
Table of Contents
Unboxing
The retail box of the new OnePlus 3 flagship this year brings a Dash Charging adapter through Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 technology. There’s also a proprietary USB type-C cable and set of papers.
Design and build
Right off the bat the OnePlus 3 feels a lot cooler and heavier than its predecessors what with the Chinese startup going full metal to cover its internals. It spans the entire phone until meeting the 5.5-inch 2.5D front panel in Gorilla Glass 4 for screen protection.
Nothing much can be said about design but that it’s comfortable to hold. The sides thin down from the middle giving you more grip over a relatively large phone. It’s only a few millimeters smaller than my Nexus 6P and it made a world of difference when navigating through its expanse. Yes, there are bits of finger gymnastics but it didn’t feel as if the phone was going to fall off my averagely Asian sized hand.
It’s USB type-C for the charging port flanked by bottom-firing speakers and an audio jack. On the right panel, you can find the wake/lock button below the dual nano SIM tray sans the option expand memory via microSD. The opposite side houses a notification slider above the volume rocker.
A capacitive home button serves as a hyper-fast fingerprint scanner. Seriously. It’s as fast as Taylor Swift changing boyfriends. (Yes, that fast.)
Internal hardware and benchmark
Powering the device is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, paired with an Adreno 530 GPU, a whopping 6GBs of RAM and 3000maH of juice. It’s basically a mid-tier gaming PC in pocket form without leaving us hanging in multitasking and graphics intensive games.
Camera
OnePlus played it safe by packing a 16MP Sony Exmor sensor for the main camera with f2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus, OIS and other bells and whistles.
The proprietary camera app lets you maximize the capabilities of the phone by adding manual mode. Paired with its monster of a RAM, HDR shooting feels like it’s capturing images in auto mode with the lack of stutters and hiccups. The OnePlus 3 just shoots and shoots and no matter how may HDR photos you take it has more than enough bark and bite to keep up.
The only downside to the main shooter is that it protrudes out the back that you can feel the camera looking into your soul.
2k video recording at 30fps and 720 at 120fps mean detailed, high-quality videos and some interesting slow-motion moments to boot.
The selfie camera is a standard 8MP f2.0 shooter. A nifty little feature is the smile detection that automatically takes a photo after 3 seconds of scanning your smile.
OS and UI
Ever since the split from CyanogenMod, OnePlus has built, from the ground-up, their signature Oxygen OS based off of Android Marshmallow 6.0. It’s very close to vanilla Android with customization options at the back without slowing the phone down.
It’s familiar, properly optimized, and feels buttery smooth in every aspect of the OnePlus 3.
Battery and Charging
Battery life and endurance is average at about 4 to 5 hours of screen-on-time with average usage at 50% on Wi-Fi and 50% on LTE. 30% social media, 30% games, 30% video playback and 10% texting and calling.
I tested using it as my daily driver for about a week and it could get me through a day with about 20% remaining. Frugal usage left me at about 40% in the bank.
Much of the economy of its juice can be pointed to the phone having an only 1080p resolution. And I agree. Yes, it’s no 2k or 4k video playback like Samsungs, iPhones, and Sony(ies?) but Youtube maxes out at 1080p anyway and 2k video playback is heavy on the data to boot. So why sacrifice battery life for a chance to play a 2k resolution video on a phone?
Verdict and Pricing
It’s very hard to argue against a phone with specifications you can hardly see in other flagship devices at less than half the price in contrast to the top-dogs. It has good battery life, great design, good camera, and crazy fast performance and navigation.
The OnePlus 3 fares better than LG’s V10 and G5, Samsung’s S7 and Note 5, and iPhones. Perhaps it’s only commercially available competition is the Nexus 6P.
Priced at around PHP 20,000 (depending on where you get it), OnePlus has never been more poised to take on the giants in the industry. Yes, that annoying camera bump is and will be irritating to deal with but there are options to flatten this out with proprietary cases anyway.
It’s a great phone to buy if you’re (sort-of) on a budget and is looking to upgrade from the OnePlus One, for example, and others released back in 2014.
Pros and cons of OnePlus 3
+ Metal design
+ Dash charging
+ Snappy fingerprint scanner
+ Affordable flagship
– Average camera quality
– No microSD card slot
OnePlus 3 specs, price, release date in the Philippines
- Display: 5.5-inch 1080p FHD OLED screen, 401ppi
- Design: Full metal body, 2.5D curved glass
- CPU: Snapdragon 820 quad-core chip
- RAM: 6GB
- Memory: 64GB internal
- SD card: no microSD card slot
- Main camera: 16MP rear shooter, f2.0 lens, phase detection autofocus, 4K UHD video
- Front camera: 8MP selfie shooter, f/2.0 lens
- Connectivity: WiFi ac, BT 4.2, GPS, GLONASS, NFC,
- Security: Fingerprint scanner
- Battery: 3000 mAh, Dash Charging
- OS: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, Oxygen UI
- Ports: Type-C 1.0 reversible connector
- Release date: June 2016 availability in the Philippines
- Official price: $399 or roughly around P19k to 20k price in pesos
Thanks for the review. Where did you buy oneplus 3 and what simcard did you use?
ok po ba yung oneplus 3 sa greenhills?