OnePlus One review – The flagship smartphone killer

ONEPLUS ONE CAMERA

The Nexus 5 remains a good alternative to the OnePlus One for people who don’t have the courage or patience to order a still-pretty-expensive phone from an unknown name. But the One comfortably surpasses the Nexus for camera quality.

Its rear camera uses the fourth-generation Sony IMX214 sensor, a 13-megapixel 1/3.06-inch sensor also used in the Huawei Ascend P7 and many other phones. This is paired with a pretty fast f2.0 lens. You don’t get optical image stabilisation, a synthetic depth of field mode or any fancy focusing technology beyond standard contrast detection, but in good lighting photos are nice and sharp. 

A wooden staircase showing off the dynamic range of the OnePlus One in its standard shooting mode – click the image for the full high resolution version

There’s some light grain to photos in all light conditions and exposure metering isn’t quite on the level of an iPhone 5S, but you can take some cracking photos with the OnePlus One. Another sign that this is a real enthusiast phone is that while the camera app’s screen fills out to show a 16:9 image in the camera app, the actually captured photo is – as standard 4:3 – using the whole area of the sensor. Most phones happily crop into the camera’s sensor, binning a bit chunk of the data it captures. One slight issue is that the HDR mode is a bit overdone. It produces seriously striking images, but they generally look a bit unnatural, like they have been Photoshopped by a too-eager teenager.

A close-up of some plants, showing the Macro capabilities of the OnePlus One – click the image for the full high resolution version

The OnePlus One’s other camera tricks are more than welcome. You get 4K video capture and an unusually high-resolution 5-megapixel front camera, for selfies and that. These high-res front cameras have popped up in Chinese phones a bunch of times, but we’re starting to see them appear in more mainstream mobiles – the HTC One M8 is the most obvious example.

Rochester castle shot using the HDR mode to retain shade and detail in the bright sky – click the image for the full high resolution version

ONEPLUS ONE BATTERY LIFE

We found that the OnePlus One’s 3100mAh battery lasts slightly less long than the HTC One M8 or LG G3, but performance is nevertheless very good. We got 11 hours 57 minutes of video playback off a full charge with brightness set to 50 per cent, where the LG G3 lasted for 13 hours 12 minutes. As is common among high-end phones, you can’t remove the OnePlus One’s battery. The back can be prised off with a tool, but the battery isnt user replaceable.

With cautious use, you can get the best part of two days’ use out of the OnePlus One, although it doesn’t have the super power-frugal modes that you get with the Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony Xperia Z2 and HTC One M8. These do things like make the screen black and white, and limit your access to apps.

ONEPLUS ONE 4G

So far it seems there are few serious reasons for cash-conscious buyers not to give serious thought to buying a OnePlus One. However, there are some issues.

While the OnePlus One offers 4G, the bands it supports are in no way optimised for the UK. Without band 20/800Mhz, you can’t get 4G from O2, GiffGaff, Tesco or Vodafone. Three 4G performance may be a little iffy too as its network uses that band, as well as others. Only EE exclusively uses bands supported by the OnePlus One. That should be enough to put some of you off completely, and we wouldn’t blame you.

Other problems are much easier to forgive. For example, there’s no IR blaster, which lets you use a phone as a universal remote. The internal speaker isn’t a patch on the HTC One M8 or Sony Xperia Z2 either, with pretty thin sound. We also found that call volume was a little low, although this is reportedly being fixed in an update.

CONCLUSION

We can’t forget the OnePlus One’s 4G issue, and it is enough on its own to rightfully dissuade some people from buying one of these phones. The One is also no good if you’re after a phone on a contract, as it’s not available through traditional channels.

If you can stump up the cash to buy one outright, and can live with being limited to certain networks if you want 4G, though, the OnePlus One is frankly a stellar bargain. This isn’t just a phone with good specs that has been cobbled together with no attention to detail.

It’s a little large but the design is sound, and CyanogenMod will go down a treat with people who have some experience of using an Android, but no love for bloated custom UIs. The big problem at present is getting your hands on one.