Gadgetory

should you buy the new one plus smartphone the answer used to come easy if you want high-end specs at a crazy low price then yes it's your only compelling option but the oneplus 2 comes 15 months after its trailblazing predecessor the smartphone world has changed and oneplus had a big hand in changing it can the so-called flagship killer keep up in a world where solid smartphones keep getting less expensive i'm michael fisher with pocket now let's find out in our video review of the oneplus 2 if there's one thing oneplus excels at here its presentation opening the box reveals a handheld with a fancy fit and finish and a heft usually reserved for more expensive hardware the flash doesn't stop at the phone you get a soft linguini style charging cable done up in striking red with a slim non shielded USB insert on one end a reversible type-c connector on the other and a flexible strap to keep it nicely coiled why are we spending so much time on the cable because little conveniences like that make customers feel taken care of and oneplus continues the practice on the phone itself with a complementary screen protector don't take it off like I did it's meant to be on there it makes the glass a little stickier a little more prone to oily build-up but it's still a nice and free concession to protection beneath that protection sits a sheet of Gorilla Glass and beneath that sits the 5.5 inch full HD LCD the screen while nice enough is unremarkable it's reasonably sharp and it gets bright enough to be seen in most lighting conditions but its colors are pretty washed out and its viewing angles could definitely be better the ability to change the color temperature wasn't baked into the software to begin with but one plus is including that option in a new software release more on that in a second on the flip side is the sandstone backing that oneplus made famous with its first flagship killer a sharkskin coating that makes the phone easy to hold and fun to feel up if you don't like it other style swap backs are available ranging from Kevlar to Rosewood its bordered on all sides by an aluminum magnesium mid plate featuring ports for powerful speakers at the bottom a clever three-stage switch on the side that lets you control the notification mode without tapping the touchscreen and volume and power buttons that we wish were textured differently so that we could better tell them apart by feel open up the hood and you get a look at the oneplus 2 s other hardware standout a dual SIM tray included as standard that means you can use the phone on two cellular networks simultaneously what you can't see here are the 3300 milliamp hour battery and the Snapdragon 810 processor or the accompanying RAM and storage our review device is the more expensive 64 gig variant with four gigs of RAM on the software appearances aside this ain't your father's Google phone one-plus is using its own oxygen OS to power the oneplus 2 which is a custom interface based on android 5.1 while it looks a lot like the stock version of lollipop it's a bit more customizable you can trigger the notification shade with a swipe anywhere on the screen a godsend on a phone as tall as this you can also control which toggles you want displayed on that notification drawer decide what accent and LED colors you want and individually control app permissions it's kind of like getting a preview of Android marshmallow and in some ways it's better remember that scrubbed plan to allow users to select dark or light themes in Android M it's here on the oneplus 2 and it looks fantastic the custom options don't stop at interface colors the fingerprint scanner which is excellent by the way doubles as a home button in both it and the capacitive keys flanking it are programmable and tapping them once gets you the usual home back or multitasking functions while long pressing or double clicking them performs other actions like launching the camera or opening Google now and if you don't want to deal with any of that you can disable all the capacitive keys and switch to software controls in which themselves can be customized according to your whims some of the custom options are more convoluted than they're worth it's nice to be able to launch the camera or flashlight without unlocking the phone first but we'd prefer a less cumbersome way to do it than doodling on the display also the Shelf has some good ideas working for it but ultimately it's just a vertically scrolling list of widgets the oneplus two's camera software is slow to launch and often unstable but at press time oneplus was preparing a big update to the viewfinder that included raw support and manual controls as part of oxygen OS 2.1 it was too late for us to hold this review any more than we already had but we'll follow up with a dedicated post at pocketnow.com - the photos themselves this phone already kicks out some really cool shots update or no we've taken this camera everywhere and the streets of Boston to the shores of Long Island to the mountains of North Carolina to the ferns of terms of Berlin and in each of those locations the oneplus 2 produced photos we were proud of the camera uses an optically stabilized 13 megapixel sensor with oversized pixels and F 2.0 aperture a 6th element lens and laser assisted autofocus and it's mirrored on the front side by a 5-megapixel selfie camera the result of all that optical technobabble is really nice shots more often than not for mobile geeks it's proof that you don't need a Sony sensor to get photos worth keeping from a smartphone for normal people it's proof you don't need to spend a fortune to get the same thing even some of the time at least in low-light situations as always though the less light there is the more digital noise creeps in and that holds true both for primary camera shots and for selfies also the HDR mode doesn't do the best job of preserving authentic colors the optical stabilization could be substantially better at smoothing the shot during walk-and-talk videos and focus wanders constantly in video mode it's hugely distracting if you're moving the camera even a small amount again as a press time we're expecting an update on this device so we'll see what that does for it we've used the oneplus 2 for 42 days across four states and two continents that's much longer than our usual review period and the reason is that we initially tested a pre-release media version like everyone else it's the one you saw in our galaxy s6 comparison but we saw some weird behavior in that one and wanted to know what a retail unit was like so we switched about a week ago probably the most fun part of the oneplus 2 experience on the whole has been the dual SIM slots at the extreme edges of network coverage we had to swap between t-mobile and AT&T frequently to maintain a connection and that was easily done in the settings menu with no rebooting or APN reprogramming necessary unfortunately the oneplus 2 S reception fell a little short the much cheaper Moto G often did a better job holding on to a signal at least in the mountains of North Carolina if you live in the boonies take this phone on a test drive through your fringe areas before the return period expires the news is better when it comes to battery life despite the general belief that dual Sims do a number on endurance we routinely got over four hours of screen on time per charge with moderate use it's not great but it's not bad either annoyingly there's no quick charge support here so topping it up takes a while we're talking almost two hours tethered to a wall and if you're out and about you better hope you didn't leave your charging cable at home because not many of your friends are likely to have type-c USB cables lying around while we're tabulating hassles there's no wireless charging either and no NFC that means among other things no support for Android pay which is just starting to roll out here in the States bad timing to wrap things up on a positive note the snapdragon 810 processor will not fry your fingers off just as we've foretold in the sacred texts yes the phone gets hot when you're playing an intense round of whatever and yes it'll blast through your battery in no time under that condition but every other phone does that too and from day-to-day use to heavy loads the oneplus 2 is a lot like every other phone when you consider how much cheaper the 1+2 is than every other phone the typical performance starts to look a lot like great performance now the price doesn't serve as an excuse for all the phones shortcomings and this thing was marketed as not just a killer of flagships but a killer of next year's flagships you should not expect anything close to that from the oneplus 2 and to be honest you should expect a few bugs for all its makers bluster about being a mainstream table flipper or whatever the oneplus 2 still has the soul of a tinkerer smartphone bought by people with the patience to wait for an invitation and the patience to tweak their way around shortcomings if that's the kind of patience you possess or if saving literally hundreds of dollars on a smartphone will allow you to find that patients within you the oneplus 2 should definitely place on your list of contenders it's not the game changer its predecessor was and it's not the hero its creators seem to think it is but it is a smartphone with an uncommon ly good feature set for under $400 unlocked that makes it if not a must by then at least a worthy temptation the landscape is littered with competitors of the oneplus 2 and we reviewed many of them check out our other video reviews here on YouTube and head on over to pocketnow.com for the full reviews of those devices and the full review of the oneplus 2 available very soon till next time this has been michael fisher hey follow me on twitter captain to phones it's captain the number two phones follow pocket now on social media as well where it is just pocket now and most importantly thanks for watching we'll see you next time you