Gadgetory

general wisdom is that you never buy the first iteration of a product but we really don't seem to start taking a company seriously until we've seen them in the market for three product releases this is a big year for oneplus not only reaching a third smartphone but also growing up in dumping the invite purchasing system used in the past now any review of this phone can take one of two courses focusing on the performance of this device as it relates to the price or treating this phone is more of a competitor to higher priced flagships for the sake of expediency we'll be focusing on the former more than the latter we can just take it for granted that all value judgments and opinions should end with the phrase for the price so I don't have to repeat that particular phrase at nauseam starting with this design it's an attractive handset the aluminum frame these clean simple lines we're not breaking any new style ground here but we're clearly refining the brand's look which is progress there is an evolution of sorts moving from the oneplus 2 to this phone even if we can't point to some inspirations from companies like huawei in HTC though the thinness is a bit marred by this camera bulge on the back overall it's a clean looking device it might not turn heads when used in public but it certainly won't be derided we do miss the bolder design choices from previous phones like the sandstone back on the oneplus 2 I'm not particularly won over by thinness so most of the time spent reviewing it has lived in the sandstone snap-on case a nice throwback to the feel of the op2 but not quite as elegant as having this material built into the back of the phone on paper the oneplus 3 has a respectable balance of specs the 5.5 inch display is a 1080p AMOLED panel more on the screen a bit later in this review and below the screen we've got a snappy always-on fingerprint sensor which doubles as the home button we have a Snapdragon 820 on tap to power the device nice seeing the current top-of-the-line chipset from Qualcomm here the oneplus 3 has 6 gigabytes of RAM which you can't quite really use all of and 64 gigabytes of built-in storage there's a dual SIM card tray but no microSD card expansion the rear camera bolt holds a 16 megapixel shooter with optical image stabilization which is backed up by an 8 megapixel front-facing amaura and like the frame the battery also shrinks to a 3000 milliamp hour pack down from last year's 3300 but still keeps pace with most flagships produced this year oneplus was early to the USB type-c game and now adds their own flavor of fast charging to the mechs yeah for $399 it's a solid list of hardware features though the display has already generated a little controversy moving from an LCD last year to AMOLED this year would normally be a move we'd praised but the screen on this phone really isn't one of the 1+3 strong points I still stand by my comment from our first impressions video that it's generally fine at arm's length but it's dimmer than last year's oneplus 2 making it more difficult to see outdoors another issue comes down to this sub pixel arrangement on the oneplus 2 LCD we see a proper RGB stripe every pixel has corresponding red blue and green sub pixels moving to AMOLED means we lose some of those sub pixels in a pentile arrangement this diamond layout means we have fewer red and blue dots than we do green short story long this means text and fine detail just won't be as crisp on this phone as it was on last year's the problem isn't 1080p resolution on this screen size it's how many dots make up that 1080p resolution we still wouldn't call this a deal-breaker but seeing is how looking at a phone screen is kind of a major thing that people do throughout the day we can totally understand why this might sour some folks on the oneplus 3 moving to software another sign of this company's maturity oxygen OS has developed into a strong competitor against the TouchWiz ha's and senses out there as Android has gotten prettier it's taken a lot of the pressure off of manufacturers to skin it like crazy the oneplus 3 UI is largely stocked with a few elements to tweak the experience there's a handy little side panel where you can customize a vertical pane of widgets and shortcuts we've got a handful of gestures to weight the screen or launch the camera there's a simple alphabetized app drawer major kudos there and the dark theme comes in handy especially when using the phone at night the main gripe we can point to might be this home screen arrangement there's a ton of wasted space at the top where a whole extra row of icons could live we can change the app drawer grid spacing but not the home screen tiles but how does this software run we're happy to report that in app performance is terrific no surprise as this is the same processor you'll find in most flagship phones sliding through the UI is slick and smooth looking at apps which will tax this Hardware games play great implosion ran like buttah and while we saw some stutters on Marvel's future fight the lower screen resolution seems to help here over phones like the galaxy s7 and we're happy to report that after a handful of missions the phone runs cooler than metal back to devices running last year's welcome 810 processor circling back to my earlier jab about the RAM 1 plus considers this a feature and not a bug this phone will aggressively dump background apps from memory to preserve battery life if you're just swapping back and forth between a handful of apps you're unlikely to encounter issues but then why have 6 gigabytes of RAM we really hope oneplus loosens the restrictions on this behavior like Samsung ultimately did with similar RAM management last year on the galaxy s6 but if you can't wait the groovy dudes over at XDA have already found a workaround to get a bit more kick out of this hardware network performance on AT&T was solid around town though reception often lagged a couple decibels behind the galaxy s7 and indoors I would sometimes find the phone had completely disconnected from the network another issue we hope is addressed in a future update and Wi-Fi performance is similarly mid-pack your connection to a router will fall off a bit faster than when using more expensive phones moving to the camera we have the most in-depth review of the oneplus threes capabilities available online as a separate video linked below this review you won't find a deeper dive covering all aspects of this camera's performance but as a brief overview this phone camera is a solid performer with a handful of compromises photos are largely well exposed if a bit on the juicy saturated side spot metering helps make sure the camera is exposing for what you focus on and the phase detect fussing system is reliable enough for us low-light performance is kind of grainy mess though and there's a separate HDR style the noise setting to help clean up output but it's not well communicated to consumers what this setting does the app is clean simple and well laid out but it could do with a little bit better conveyance for explaining how it all works even though the phone produces UHD video video performance is a bit weak whether it's twitchy image stabilization noise reduction wrecking the audio or compression artifact ting wigging out the sky we can't say this is one of our favorite video shooters the slow motion does come out smooth though so that's kind of fun but seriously if you really want to know what this thing can do hit our real camera review to see over thirteen minutes worth of samples in glorious UHD resolution shifting gears let's have a chat about the audio it's one of the most glorious moments as a reviewer when a phone truly takes you by surprise initial impressions were very positive clean punchy balanced output from the headphone jack this amp is more powerful than the hardware found on the galaxy s7 or LG g5 and running this phone through some analyzer tools it handily beat those two flagships and trailed closely behind some of our absolute favorite music phones like the HTC 10 and LG v10 just nipping at the heels of the iPhone 6s this was shocking in the best way possible the one plus three is a very good option for the audiophile on a budget and that bottom firing speaker is no slouch either not the loudest we've tested for alerts and notifications but it provides detailed and crisp playback so what good is all this technology if your battery can't hang a Qualcomm 820 paragrah the 3000 milliamp hour battery is pretty well understood territory here and we easily got all day runtime with some juice to spare after dinner looking at our media test streaming 30 minutes of HD video over Wi-Fi at 50 percent brightness the oneplus 3 drained 5 percent of its battery which is top to your performance and if you need to top off during the day you won't have much of a wait plugging the phone in for 30 minutes delivered a 53% charge a word of warning though as this fast charging system is a proprietary solution from oneplus not related to Qualcomm quick charging system so you might not get this speed if you aren't using the supplied charger in cables so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the oneplus 3 ignoring marketing slogans for a second this is a superb phone at 399 dollars and represents an excellent bang for buck it's been an exciting year for mid Rangers watching companies push more top-tier hardware into lower price tiers we have a proper competitor to the iPhone se here and it trades blows really well with many phones from last year which have fallen in price taking a swipe at one plus PR though we do have a little settling to do the dimmer grainy screen some camera compromises proprietary fast charging and twitchy RAM management and some folks may be concerned about support and software updates given the company's history another area where cost needs to be built into the price of a device oneplus doesn't talk about killing flagships anymore which is good as this thing can't quite kill flagships it's not really fair to this phone to compare it against substantially more expensive offerings even if the processors are the same but what the oneplus 3 gets us is pretty darn close to a true-blue top-tier flagship experience but for a lot less cash judged by that criteria it's a successful experiment from a company we're happy to see grow up as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full 1+3 coverage and we mentioned the camera review because you should really watch that camera review for pocket now I'm Quan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review