Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave - D and this is my review of the oneplus 2 so when the first one plus phone came out the oneplus one I remember reading or seeing something on the internet about how they were losing money on each phone that they were selling or at the very best for like breaking even and they didn't care they didn't care about the profits they just wanted to be seen they wanted to be heard and they basically wanted to disrupt the market and they did so a year and a half later they launched the oneplus 2 now this is a very important for them it's like their sophomore phone it's actually my most anticipated phone for 2015 so I've used it everyday for about a week and a half here are my thoughts the box is a soft touch finish and noticeably smaller than the first generation you shake it open and inside you see a wrapped phone some pamphlets a wall plug and a USBC cable this is an upgraded model that comes in at 380 dollars and the base model comes in at 330 dollars the presentation of the phone is great I think a lot of inexpensive phones just kind of skimp out on the whole presentation thing and truthfully it's not that important but oneplus always does a good job with it the phone feels very functional and industrial to me it doesn't really follow the whole trend for beauty and elegance I mean I love those phones they have their place but the oneplus 2 is kind of boxy and practical but it works the front of the device is covered in Gorilla Glass 4 as well as a factory installed screen protector there's a fingerprint sensor that also serves as a capacitive button right in the middle here as well as two capacitive buttons on the left and right there's also a five megapixel front facing camera up top here the fingerprint sensor works and looks just like the one on the Samsung s6 so it's more of a sensor that acts as a button instead of a traditional button that you can click on the back we have that iconic sandstone back cover and a 13 megapixel camera with laser focus the sandstone finish is rougher this year and sometimes it feels less premium like I'm not sure if it's the finish itself or it's because of how thin the plastic cover is but I definitely prefer the sandstone finish from last year let's take a look around the device so on the bottom we have the speaker USB C port and a mic on the right side we have a power button and a volume rocker and on the top we have a mic and a headphone jack and on the left side we have the alert slider so this is a three-position slider to physically control whether or not you'll be notified with sounds it's not super amazing or anything but it is useful the location of the power button is a little off to me so I've been using Motorola phones a lot and those phones have the position of the volume and the power switch flipped with the power button above the volume rocker I've been using it for a week and a half and I'm still not used to it I'm accidentally turning off the phone when I'm just trying to lower the volume so if you're a Motorola user you might have this issue as well the single speaker doesn't sound great but it gets reasonably loud and it's pointed downwards like iPhone so you have to do that cup thing to hear better the USBC port is a I mean there's a lot I don't like about it but I still think it was a right choice to put it in it probably increased their cost price to put it in and it's even bigger than a microUSB but the reversible thing is nice and really it is the future we're eventually gonna have to switch so we might as well start now the cable itself looks really cool when it's coiled on the box but I actually broke mine on the third day it just stopped charging I think it might have been bent in the box for too long or something I'm sure just got unlucky but since it's not microUSB I actually to go out and buy a couple of USB C cables that sucked the back cover comes off pretty easily and it's surprisingly thin and really flexible underneath you have access to the double SIM card slot I really like that you don't need any sim tools to switch Sims and because I like to break I open this up further on the inside the first thing I notice is that you can totally remove and replace that battery and it's cool to even put the effort in to cover it up in like a red one plus wrapping that's kind of neat another thing you see these two contacts here so even when you have that middle plate and you can still see them on the outside so maybe you can click connect these two like one of those sticker things for wireless charging to stick on the back modern on the oneplus 2 has the same screen size of five and a half inches to the LG g4 and a zenfone 2 it's a little bit taller and heavier than the g4 but it's still comfortable to hold now in terms of its width it's slightly narrower than the g4 so it makes one-handed use just a little bit easier but it's still not one hand usable for a lot of people the screen is an IPS display of 1920 by 1080 it's not as good as the quad HD display of the way more expensive LG g4 like the colors aren't as vibrant and it's not as bright and crispy but it's still good but with nice screens from other budget phones like the Alcatel idol 3 or the Asus zenfone 2 it doesn't really stick out from the bunch like I would say it's in the middle of the pack but at the very least it's on par with other mid tier 5 and a half inch screens I'm kind of disappointed by the camera on the phone it's not a bad camera far from it but the amount of hype that oneplus was generating for this thing was really overwhelming and I feel like the camera really under-delivered given the hype there's supposed to be a software update to improve things but as of right now here's where we stand daylight photography is good but low-light photos are kind of weak and they're very slow to take and this is the story we've heard for so many mid-tier cameras so I'm just going to leave it at that I'm not going to totally grill this thing because I know oneplus is working on it but I'll probably be back with a more thorough camera review in the future there's no quick charge or wireless charging at least not officially but I am pleased with the battery life it's a 3300 milliamp battery and I've run it down several times and I was able to hit four to four and a half hours of screen time basically every attempt it comfortably lasts a full day of normal use and it takes about three hours for a full charge performance is excellent I'm not going to waste your time showing benchmarks but just know that the Snapdragon 810 is very fast and it's on par with any of the fastest mobile phones on the market games run really smooth the UI is snappy and I could also never get it to overheat it gets warm and it throttles down but there's no overheat messages or any noticeable issues from heat so that's good lastly is the OS it's running android 5.1.1 with the oxygen 2.0 skin it's a very light skinned overstock Android and I really like it basically everything that's in oxygen OS feels like a natural extension of stock Android things like the customizable pull down Android toggles the customizable shelf like all the icons and menus just look stock and that's a wonderful thing it also has like the double tap to wake finger gestures for flashlights and cameras so tons of little features and there's nothing that I really dislike about it okay so the recap for the oneplus two 5.5 inch IPS display Full HD it's a good screen but it's not super special five megapixel front facing camera that looks the same as every other five megapixel front facing camera a fingerprint sensor that works most the time I mean it's not perfect but it's as reliable as they're going to get right now and two capacitive buttons that light up in the back we have that signature sandstone cover a 13 megapixel camera that's pretty mediocre right now but they're working on it so it'll likely get better a physical notification switch on the side which works well and a single speaker that doesn't sound amazing but it gets pretty loud on the inside we have a 3300 milliamp battery that will get you through a day a super fast 2nd gen Snapdragon 810 with 4 or 2 gigs of RAM and we have either 64 or 16 gigs of ram depending on your model there's no SD expansion there's no wireless charging no quick charging and no NFC ok closing thoughts the technical components on the phone are good the processor is a beast it's priced well and oxygen OS is actually really nice to use but here's the thing in 2015 there's a lot of really good options for inexpensive smartphones and the oneplus 2 doesn't really stick out from the crowd the camera is mediocre right now I know they're working on a patch but this is something that they should have fixed prior to launch and it's missing things like NFC wireless charging fast charging and expandable storage these are things that are really important to a lot of people and instead we got stuff like USB C and a fingerprint sensor so things that are really cool but there's less popular now here's the thing the phone is good it's a good phone but don't believe the hype it's not a flagship killer which brings me to a couple thoughts I have about one plus as a company first is their marketing I don't like how they have that invite system still I understand why they had it in the beginning it's like a safe way for them to sell these phones without overproducing when you're first starting out at this point it's just generating artificial interest for the phone when you don't even need it their second thing is there 2016 flagship killer motto I mean it's not a flagship killer I'm pretty sure we know it oneplus probably knows it I don't understand why they have to do it you're creating a misleading motto for your great phone don't do that the last thing is customer service now I'm a big believer in customer service I think that one plus has poor customer service to say the least now it's kind of expected they don't have the resources like Apple and Samsung it's just kind of repair and replace phones as quickly as big companies do but I mean ok when my USBC cable broke I don't even think for half a second to contact them for a replacement I just went out and bought a new one that's not cool I don't think that that's good for a company to kind of build up on bad customer service I was like a standard in your company that's the end of this review I hope you guys liked it you guys did give me some thumbs if you loved it give me some subs it's been nice I'll see you guys next time