Gadgetory

one plus is back with a third phone that just might be the charm and you no longer need an invite to buy it it's Joshua freghar from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the one plus three now before we get into the full review let's get the specifications out of the way longtime fans and followers of oneplus will notice that the oneplus 3 has a pretty radically changed design there's no longer a removable backing and the backing is no longer of sandstone black material now you have a complete uniboob that is a little bit larger due to the 5.5 inch screen but it's also incredibly thin this is definitely a sleek and slender device with all of the different bits and pieces exactly where you would expect them to be it's also quite minimalistic with only the oneplus logo on the back right underneath the camera optic package and on the top left there is still the alert slider returning from the oneplus 2 and the 1 + ex handling is not too difficult an affair even in one-handed usage is not too hard to get from one side to the other but getting to the top with this 5.5 inch screen is a little bit tougher so you're probably going to be using two hands more often than not however the main gripe that is here is that the metal is quite slippery it's a very smooth metal and though it does give it a very sleek look it might also sleek right out of your hands and that is the reason why oneplus probably gave us five different cases showing all the different materials that otherwise would have been backings for the phone but instead these are all covers that you can snap onto the back of the device sandstone black is still a material that a lot of other companies aren't using and now on the one plus three we simply don't have that anymore what you have is a metal phone much like plenty of other phones in the market today and if you really want to have that better grip on the phone because this metal is quite slippery you're going to have to use those covers and that's a little bit of a nuisance no matter which way you put it and though we might be a little bit sad that oneplus has stepped backwards in their design departments we do think that oneplus has created what can be considered though typical a very nice-looking metal phone given that this device is supposed to be somewhat affordable it's no surprise that 1080p resolution comes in this 5.5 inch AMOLED screen that said however it would have been nice to see quad HD in a phone that is supposed to be a flagship killer for 2016 but 1080p is still nice and still provides just enough sharpness for the real estate that it provides and it's still fun to use for everything from gaming to media consumption that said the AMOLED screen does provided a couple of extra features including the ambient display it does have a very similar ambient display to devices like the Nexus 6 in the Nexus 6p only you can actually wave your hand near the front of the device and it will trigger it as well there's also the night mode which is nice to have especially if you are a night owl that is always looking at the phone turning on the night mode will bump up the warmth of the color temperature way high so that it's easier on the eyes especially when you're in dark conditions overall the screen on the 1+3 is standard for the most part but it is a standard that oneplus nails but the same can be said for performance where oneplus has actually provided a little bit more on top of the performance package we need in flagships today the Snapdragon 820 provides great performance that we've had pretty much no slowdown or stutter in any application or any part of the interface and oxygen OS and I could also be attributed to oxygen os's more minimalistic design that said however performance is still top-notch especially when gaming we've had a lot of fun with Sky Force reloaded and have been able to have a lot of apps in the background even when playing these games and the reason for that is because oneplus put in six gigabytes of RAM when we're using this phone we actually don't notice any of the applications just not responding or even quitting because it runs out of the ability to keep those the memory so it's a nice little step forward for oneplus and definitely something that they will be able to boast in the oneplus 3 moving forward we'll start off talking about the hardware by saying yes there is in fact NFC in this device where the oneplus 2 had a bit of a misstep and a lot of people pointed it out the oneplus 3 clearly has NFC available so you will be able to do Android pay and also do connections through NFC call quality was quite good with no complaints on either end of the calls and there were no drop calls either one using this particular phone on the t-mobile network and speaking of sound the speaker on the bottom right next to the USB type-c port is adequately loud it doesn't have that much body to it but it's something that you would expect from a bottom mounted single speaker but speaking of audio the headphone jack actually drives headphones pretty well it's a little bit louder than a couple of other ones out there and definitely not quite as loud as the HTC 10 but it's still a very enjoyable experience straight out of the box the fingerprint reader performs very well once you get your fingerprint read and scanned into the phone it's just a matter of putting a finger down on that particular area and in under a second the phone will be woken up and unlocked right away the alert slider makes a return and in the oneplus 2 I didn't find myself using it a whole lot because I do happen to use a smart watch but lately with the oneplus 3 I did find myself changing the toggle just easily finding it because of the textured button or slider rather and being able to turn it off for full silence or for all notifications it is a nice tool to have if in a pinch you need to be able to turn off all of the notifications on your phone so you don't disturb anybody battery life on the one plus three is fairly standard given that it is a 3000 milliamp hour battery with a 5.5 inch display on a snapdragon 820 but I still got three and a half hours of screen on time despite somewhat heavier usage that included music playing and navigation throughout the day but the best part about the 1+3 is the return of fast charging which was missing in the oneplus 2 and this time - charging is what oneplus is boasting and it brings 60% of battery life in just half an hour's worth of charge and that is actually quite incredible very easy to use when you are running out of juice you just have to plug the phone in for a little bit you'll get the power you need to get through the rest of the day and yes the cable is still red but it is not flat anymore the camera of the one plus three comes with a pretty good app pretty nice and into it if not too hard to use it's very similar to the one that was in the oneplus 2 it does come with the ability to swipe on the viewfinder to change the different modes but once you get to panorama you still have to go into the vertical orientation and then you have to swipe differently to get to the other modes again it's just a little bit annoying but after that you have the manual mode that allows you to change the shutter speed the white balance and even the focus points and you also have a nice little feature that was introduced in the 1 plus 2 which is the ability to tap onto the area you want for your exposure and then move the focus point somewhere else it's actually kind of nice pretty intuitive and I think it's something that should be available in the auto mode also despite some steps forward in the cameras like having an 8 megapixel camera on the front unfortunately the camera quality of the oneplus 3 is simply average at best the main reason here especially for low-light shots is that at F 2.0 aperture it needs to have a longer shutter speed now no OIS in the world is going to be able to compensate for a very long shoulder speed so if you have shaky hands blurry photos can definitely happen that said however overall quality of these photos also tends to be lacking especially when it comes to colors and most shots there are a few shots where the clothes actually look quite good but other ones the colors have that lack of saturation to really take the vibrancy of the scene this also happens in video now though videos do tend to look pretty smooth you do see the noise in these videos as well despite this video being in 4k resolution there are even a couple of other missteps like in panorama mode when the stitching over on the right side of this photo just wasn't done very well now that we know that updates in the future might be able to make the camera a little bit better it's just a bit of a disappointment that the camera is again the main place that oneplus finds themselves stumbling in their flagship killer oxygen OS has been updated to Android marshmallow and just like in the oneplus 2 it doesn't have too many extras when compared to let's say stock Android as a matter of fact it actually looks a lot like stock Android but in this version of Android I actually think that some of the features oneplus does bacon are finally really ironed out they do provide nice functionality and they could be features that could make stock Android a little bit better the Shelf returns and is a place for you to put all of your different widgets now the widgets can be scrollable like this calendar here and that is really nice to have but this little touch that's added in is the memo a quick way of just jotting down a quick note and it's actually kind of nice to have for those times when you do need to have some information at the ready on the shelf a feature that stock Android even the Android and beta that's out right now has been unable to consistently have is the dark mode and I think the dark mode is still a great feature of oxygen OS because it provides that just little bit of customization especially since you can pick an accent color so you can really make the phone look kind of what you want it to look like the buttons on the bottom are now dots rather than lines but it still serves the same purpose they don't have to adhere to what they look like and they are fully customizable you can swap what the buttons do or you can make new functions happen if you were to double tap or hold on to any of the three buttons on the bottom it's a little bit of customization that gives just that little bit of character to oxygen OS and for the end user it's nice to have that little bit of control whereas I felt that oxygen OS was trying too hard to be like stock Android and also like cyanogen from before mixed together now oxygen feels like it has its own identity and that might be the best part about the software on top of the fact that it is really smooth the oneplus 3 is available now for 399 dollars actually a great price when you consider you don't need an invite to buy this phone anymore overall the oneplus 3 does a great job of hitting all the right notes especially for that price point but the phrase we have to look at now is not necesary flagship killer but never settle did oneplus maybe step back a little bit by creating a phone that for all intents and purposes is a lot like everyone else well for typical users this phone is still going to be a wonderful choice but for die-hard oneplus users maybe there's just that little bit less to be excited about this year what happens when a phone manufacturer takes all of the flagship conventions and puts them in a package that is not only nailing those conventions but it's actually really affordable back in the day we call that the oneplus one and I think that the reason the oneplus 2 what a misstep is because they lost sight of that philosophy instead of providing the best features for a good price which is their claims of fame they tried to put in features that were forward-thinking but not fully fleshed out that has changed now with the 1+3 that melds the philosophies of the 1 plus 1 and the 1 plus 2 together but in doing so one plus had to make a couple of compromises and maybe they also needed to create a phone that appealed to pretty much everybody and to do so they had to bend to convention as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the one plus three it's a great device and it actually does a lot of the things we would want out of a flagship killer including not needing to be bought with an invite but there are a couple of things that oneplus had to do in order to make this happen and so that's what we kind of focused on in this review stay tuned to Android 34 even more about the oneplus 2 in clean comparisons between this and the other flagships that are available in 2016 and then make sure you stick around for even more because we are your source for all things Android