OnePlus finally has a phone which feels like a ‘Flagship Killer’, even though the phrase no longer seems to be part of OnePlus marketing campaign. The new OnePlus 3 casts an impression of being a sincere attempt that addresses all issues we have had with its predecessor, the 2, and immerges as a no-nonsense phone that does things right. Oh and yeah, the twisted invite system has been dumped for good!!
OnePlus 3 Key Specifications And Features:
| Model | OnePlus 3 |
| Display | 5.5-Inch, Full HD, AMOLED Display |
| Processor | Quad Core Snapdragon 820 SoC, Adreno 530 GPU |
| RAM | 6GB |
| Internal Storage | 64GB |
| Software | Android Marshmallow based oxygen OS |
| Primary Camera | 16MP sensor, F2.0 aperture lens, LED Flash, PDAF, 4K video recording, OIS, EIS |
| Secondary Camera | 8MP Front-Facing Camera, F2.0 aperture lens, 1080p video recording |
| Battery | 3000 mAh, Dash fast charging, USB type C |
| Others | Dual SIM, 4G LTE, VoLTE Fingerprint sensor, OTG |
| Price | 27,999 INR |
Also Read: OnePlus Loop VR Review – Not Perfect, But Workable
Metallic Design And Amoled Display
OnePlus has never outright disappointed us with its design choices. The 2 was a bit chunky, but those beautiful back cover options were good enough to offset other minor shortcomings. The OnePlus 3, however, offers the best OnePlus design we have seen so far.
The 3 is light, slim, premium and quite ergonomic. The Aluminum used on the rear seamlessly extends to form thin side edges. OnePlus has retained the ‘Do not disturb’ slider on the left edge. The hard home button below the display, which also integrates a fingerprint sensor, is still capacitive and won’t budge in. The buttons that you can actually press offer good tactile feedback.
The 5 optional cases (Karbon, Bamboo, Apricot, Rosewood and Sandstone) look beautiful (even though they don’t even out the camera bump on the rear).
The Amoled display on the front is well calibrated, bright and gorgeous. Color temperature, contrast and saturation feels adequate, but if for some reason the display doesn’t agree with your taste, you can use the color balance slider present under display settings. We are perfectly fine with the OnePlus adamantly sticking to Full HD resolution for the third time. A night mode is also present, which in our books, qualifies as a must have feature for people who engage with night time reading on their phones.
Also read: Guide to choosing the right display type
Improved Camera
The little time we spent with the OnePlus 3 camera made it crystal clear that the performance has significantly improved in this iteration. We would like to explore the camera further, but we expect the camera performance to be great in good lighting – both indoors and outdoors. Here are a few camera samples.
OnePlus 3 Camera Samples
Performance Expectations and Software
The Snapdragon 820 has proved its metal many a times now, so we don’t expect OnePlus to screw performance this time around. The 6GB RAM still sounds like an overkill to me. OnePlus has opted for UFS 2.0 storage (64GB, Approx 53GB free) which again assures of smooth performance.
The light OxygenOS felt unrefined on OnePlus 2 and the updates seemed to break more than they fixed. Only time will ascertain how well the new Android Marshmallow based OxygenOS performs on the 3.
Going by the chipset involved, the 3000 mAh battery should prove to be reasonable. OnePlus’s Dash Charge is what will help you quickly replenish it. With Dash Charge, OnePlus has moved the charging mechanism to the proprietary charger. On the plus side, this enables you to engage with heavy usage and avail fast charging simultaneously. On the minus side, you will need the inbox charger by your side at all times. That sounds more of an inconvenience to me.
Also Read: Le Max2 and Le 2 First Impression
Conclusion
The OnePlus 3 feels exiting. OnePlus tread a more sensible path and the resulting flagship seems to get most things right. We will reserve our final verdict for later, but for now it feels the One is poised to do well in price sensitive markets like India, where it will go head to head with LeMax 2.
