In the past few years, Oneplus has gone from obscurity to one of the most known brands on the market if you are looking for a smartphone. It all started with the Oneplus One that was dubbed the “Flagship Killer”, and it delivered on most of its promises and for such a low price. Well after that the phones they released were hardly anything to boast about like their predecessor but newer models were mostly incremental upgrades with certain features just missing to get to the sweet price point. Since Oneplus Three is about to hit the market just at the right moment with other notable flagships, there is one question that needs to be answered. Is the Oneplus 3 worth the price?
Well, as far as we can tell from the specs and first impression it’s the most powerful and premium phone to come from Oneplus. It’s not really the sweet price point as most of us had expected but given the specs the USD 399 price is justified.
It’s an Anodized aluminium uni-body design which looks similar to HTC’s design which isn’t really much to complain about and comes out looking as something you would be proud holding in your hand. It’s slightly a bigger rounder phone and given the things packed inside it makes total sense. It’s running the OxygenOS flavour on Android Marshmallow.
It has a 5.5″ FHD(1920×1080) OPTICAMOLED screen which is supposed to have advanced custom-engineered gamma correction to provide even better viewing experience. It’s a shame that it is not using a 2K screen as it would have enhanced their VR Appeal. At this price range, there is nothing to even compare it with.
It has a rear 16MP camera using Sony IMX 298 Sensor with Optical and Electronic Image stabilisation which can shoot 4K and slow motion videos at 720P. At the front, it has an 8MP camera using Sony IMX179 which seems to be fixed focus but can take 1080P videos at 30FPS. Bot of them seems to have the f/2.0 aperture, make of that what you will.
Talking about the things under the hood It’s sporting a Snapdragon 820 which is a Quad Core Kryo in 2x 2.2 GHz, 2x 1.6 GHz. It also running an Adreno 530 which has promised to give 40% graphical performance boost over the Oneplus 2. It has 6GB of LPDDR4 which might be more than enough for even a heavy multi-users. The non-removable battery is only 3000 mAH and they are claiming it will last more than a day thanks to the SD 820 being extremely power efficient. The phone comes with a DASH Charge, their quick charging method that promises to charge up to 60% battery life withing 30 minutes which is supposed to give 7 hours of offline HD video playback.
Talking about the charging it comes with a USB 2.0, Type-C but it has a 3.5mm Jack so you can use it to listen to music while charging. It also sports 64GB of internal storage with UFS 2.0 supposed to be 3 Times faster than currently used eMMC. There is no expandable storage slot which is a shame for people who would like to record 4K video as it can easily go through free space which is probably enough for an average user. Still they seem to be slacking from their motto of “Never Settle”. It has non-carrier restricted Dual nano-SIM slot.
Apart from the few compromises such as the not 2K screen, no expandable storage and the USB 2.0 this still holds up its own at the price range. While comparatively prices a little over half the price of the flagships it is about to compete with, it might at least be worth the look before buying any new phones this season.
What do you think of the Oneplus 3? Will you be picking it up or are you gonna wait for the new generation of phones launching with Android N?
