The OnePlus 3 has been around for some time now and after a series of OTA updates, bug fixing and enhancements, it’s significantly better than what it was at the time of its launch. My name is Amit Chhangani, and today on Gizmoids we will be reviewing every aspect of the OnePlus 3 in detail following the updates it has received over the course of the past month or so.
If you don’t want to go through this entire review in text and images, you might want to watch our detailed review of the OnePlus 3 in the video below
Let’s get the box contents out of the way first. Inside the box you get the beautiful OnePlus 3 device, a pre-applied screen protector, one dash charger adapter, a Type-C Cable, a SIM Tray Ejector along with a quick start guide and safety Information. No earphones or OTG cables here, but we’re not complaining and for a good reason, as we’ll soon see. Oh, and just so you know, NFC has made a comeback on OnePlus devices, so the device is now ready for contactless payments.
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Build quality
After two generations of rocking that trademark sandstone finish, the OnePlus 3 has taken a diversion to match the top dogs in terms of design and premium build. The impeccable monoblock anodised aluminium construction has been finished stupendously well, though we find it a tad slippery for our fingers. It’s slim, but well weighted and feels great to the hand. Going by our experience, it’s quite rugged too. Our test unit has taken a few drops, and some of them have been rather nasty. This little dimple here was courtesy a rather scary fall, but the OnePlus 3 has taken everything in its stride rather well.
Design wise, our little gripe is about the rear camera bump, which would concern many owners about the scratches the lens can get. It can be fixed with an optionalOnePlus 3 back cover, though the designers should have taken care of it in the first place. We wouldn’t really have minded a bigger 4000 mAh battery filling that space up.
There’s nothing on top with the 3.5 mm jack having been moved down. Power button along with the SIM tray with space for twin Nano sims is on the right. Volume rocker and notifications slider sits on the left. Down at the bottom, you get the Type C slot along with the primary microphone and speakers flanked by a pair of really tiny crews to open the Oneplus 3 up when necessary.
At the back, you get the new 16 megapixel shooter with single flash. Noise cancellation mic has been made almost invisible by hiding it in the antenna lines running horizontally through the phone. No laser autofocus module here, but this one comprises phase detection autofocus which is really fast.
Front panel gets a fingerprint scanner, proximity sensor, an LED flash, the earpiece and an 8 MP shooter with Sony sensor. Oh, and this thing is quite smudge resistant both front and back, especially knowing that I am a man with sweaty palms.
As mentioned before, the finish and construction is absolutely mind blowing and is curiously reminiscent of some HTC phones. The phone is rather slim at 7.35 mm, though feels good in a well-built, solid way to the hand with its weight of 158 g. For now, the only colour option available in India is silvery grey Graphite. India will have to wait for the Soft Gold color, we’re told.
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Display
The 5.5 inch screen on the OnePlus 3 gets an AMOLED display replacing the IPC unit on the OnePlus 2. The full HD screen delivers natural, balanced colours and good sharpness. There’s hardly any space between the bezel and the screen making the display span the front panel almost edge-to-edge adding to the premium feel of the phone. While this looks great, I personally faced issues typing the letters close to the edge during one handed operation.
Oneplus has stayed away from a higher resolution to prevent it from becoming battery hungry. There were some issues with the screen with the initial build in terms of color reproduction which were fixed by OnePLus through an OTA update. That’s the reason why you’ll also get an sRGB mode in the options, though we find it warmer than natural and would rather have the screen run in normal mode. You also get a night mode that filters out blue light for lesser stress on eyes in dark conditions.
Processor and performance
Processor is the 820 Snapdragon SoC with Quad Core KRYO CPU and the Andreno 530 GPU. Memory is an unmatched 6GB, facilitating blazing fast performance. As with the screen, there were initially some issues with the memory usage as well, wherein the OnePlus 3 did not utilize its full RAM, kicking apps to restrict RAM and battery usage. Again, the issue has been fixed through an OTA update by Oneplus, now allowing up to 32 apps to utilize the enormous memory.
Performance, from those top-notch specs is mind blowing as you’d expect and the OnePlus 3 can handle any amount of abuse you throw at it without a hiccup. We’ve witnessed no lag, frozen frames or crashes – especially after the latest 3.2.2 OTA update. There’s absolutely no heating on this phone even after playing resource heavy games like NFS while running more than a dozen apps in the background. The OnePlus 3 absolutely blazes through whatever you challenge it with, and at this point we cannot think of an Android cellphone that delivers this sort of a performance.
Sound from the speaker is decent enough, though a comparison with the OnePlus 2 reveals that the previous generation phone was perceptibly louder. We could have probably done with better audio here, but it’s nothing worth complaining either.
OS and UI
The Oxygen OS is based on the Android Marshmallow and offers stock Android experience with no bloatware and reasonable customization options with the Oxygen launcher. Oneplus have retained the Shelf for quick access to apps and contacts. The user experience is pretty fluid with easy navigation and no lag whatsoever. OnePlushas been very proactive in listening to user feedback for the OnePlus 3 and has released several OTA updates for quick bug fixes. The recently released 3.2.2 OTA update has fixed bugs and added enhancements making the experience even better.
The 3.2.2 update adds NFC toggle to the quick settings, adds a nifty ‘pocket mode’ to the mix which disables the fingerprint scanner when the phone is in your pocket and deals with some errors with notifications. The video quality has been enhanced too with new codecs and noise cancellation while recording video is even more effective now. In addition, some more enhancements, fixes and security patches have been applied, all of which makes the OnePlus 3 perform even more flawlessly.
Camera
Rear camera gets a 16mp Sony IMX 298 Sensor with optical image stabilisation along with electronic image stabilization. It also supports RAW format for still images. The shooter app offers Dynamic de-noising, a manual mode along with auto HDR which is pretty fast.
Outdoors images in daylight conditions are pretty crisp with great colour reproduction, nice sharpness and details. Low light performance isn’t the best we have seen, but it’s pretty close, and we really won’t complain at this price. Suffice to say that the OnePlus’s camera is utterly commendable, but it isn’t the best in the business.
Autofocusing function loses its laser sensor but now gets equipped with phase detection for faster latch-ons. The focus is fast and reassuring but getting closer than 3 inches to objects, trying to go Macro does create some issues for the lens. In high contrast scenarios, the OnePlus 3 camera does tend to slightly wash out the brighter patches, though that observation is true only in comparisons with the cameras of the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6S. The OnePlus 3’s shooter is way superior to any other camera in or above its price range.
Check out the image quality in the full-size unedited samples below
Video can be shot at up to 4K resolution at 30fps. Lower resolution videos can be shot at 60fps. You also get 720p slo-mo videos at 120 fps. The videos captured from the phone are rich with effective image stabilization on the move.
Overall video quality is great with hybrid image stabilization kicking in to mitigate jerks to a large extent. It works very well in effect, just that it’s not out there with the iphone though. For videos autofocus could have been a smidgen faster, and the details better in low light. As is the case with still images, the OnepLus Rocks its price bracket but is some distance from away the absolute leaders which sell for double the price.
An important update to the video codecs have been delivered through the 3.2.2 OTA update, which has improved the recording quality in 4K mode, along with better noise cancellation while recording videos. Does it work? Well we did compare some videos taken before the update and a marginal difference in both video and audio quality is noticeable.
The front camera unit gets an 8 megapixel Sony sensor with a 2.0 aperture and features an electronic image stabilizer. This unit is capable of 1080p videos at 30fps and is as good as it gets for front shooters. It features a wide angle lens, which is wider than the iPhone, though narrower than the Galaxy S7.
There is absolutely no way you can say anything negative about the OnePlus 3’s camera. It absolutely demolishes everything in its own segment and fights toe to toe with much more expensive phone cameras. The only noticeable area where is trails the iPhone camera by some margin is video stabilization and extreme slo mo, while matching it or outdoing it in most other parameters.
A sleeker body means the 3 packs in a 3000 mAh bater as against its predecessor’s 3300 mAh unit. Power management is much better on this one though and the 3 easily lasts for more than 12 hours with moderate use. Screen time is a decent 4.5 – 5 hours, and we think the battery performance on the newest Oneplus flagship is satisfactory if not outright mind blowing.
What is mind blowing, though is One Plus’s new Dash charger. Now we have seen quick charging on other phones, and this one blows everything away to emerge the absolute king of the fast charging ring. A mere 10 minute of charging would refill you by about 30 -40 percent and you’d be good for another 4-5 hours. Effectively you don’t need to have a full charge anymore, as you can have a quick refill, well, real quick! That adapter outputs 4 amperes at 5 Volts – almost double that of any other charger.
Also, OnePlus has replaced the flat anti-tangle cable with a fat, round cable, and we’re sure there’s a good reason why they’ve done that. Replace the new cable with anything else, and the phone wouldn’t charge as fast. With its blazing charging speeds, the Oneplus 3 has changed my phone charging pattern, and generally made life very convenient and free of battery blues.
To improve the battery life further, the 3.2.2 OTA update has made some improvements to the Doze mode, enabling it to save battery even more efficiently while idle.
Some very frugal power management, along with the standout Dash charging makes the OnePlus 3 score very highly in terms of battery department, DESPITE featuring a smaller capacity battery than its predecessor.
Verdict
The OnePlus 3 is exceptional in almost every way you look at it. We cannot point a finger at anything that it does wrong, except, probably for that camera bump, which makes me feel bad every time I have to put this thing on a hard surface. That problem too can easily be solved by applying a back cover.
Astonishing build quality, blazing fast performance and a genuinely capable camera at a crazy price. The OnePlus 3, after its relatively underwhelming 2 predecessor is here for redemption. It’s one hell of a smartphone at a mind blowingly good price. It’s really almost as perfect as a reasonably priced smartphone could ever get. Kudos, Oneplus! Keep up the great work!