One plus3 (Graphite, 64 GB) genuine review

HIGHLIGHTS OF ONE PLUS 3

• The OnePlus 3 is the company's newest flagship, featuring a metal unibody build
• The phone has fantastic performance and good battery life. 

LOOK AND FEEL

•  The plastic rear panel with sandstone finishing is gone; replaced by cold, hard aluminium. Furthermore, it's a unibody with a dull metallic finish.It's beautiful, well-built, and finally brings OnePlus into the big leagues of design.
•  Corning Gorilla Glass 4 which curves at the edges of the screen and offers a fair bit of protection against accidental scratches and damage.
•   At the front is a capacitive home key with a fingerprint sensor built in, along with two more capacitive buttons on either side. These are usually invisible but a small backlight is activated when the buttons are touched. The software allows you to deactivate them and switch to on-screen keys if you prefer.
•  The fingerprint sensor is a huge improvement over the one on the OnePlus 2. It's slightly recessed, and unlocks the phone even from standby mode without first needing to wake the device. This makes it a little bit quicker than many other devices.It's also incredibly accurate and registers with even a gentle tap of the sensor. Up to five fingerprints can be stored, and the sensor can also be used to authorise purchases and control access to certain apps. OnePlus claims that the sensor will continuously improve and learn your habits and ways as you keep using it, thereby making it more accurate over time
•  It's a lot slimmer at the sides because of the curved back, and feels great to hold. However, it's worth noting that the primary camera bulges out a fair bit, and could potentially be damaged if you use the phone without a protective case.
• The OnePlus 3 sticks to the same display size and resolution as its predecessors, with a 5.5-inch 1080x1920-pixel screen that has a pixel density of 401ppi. However, OnePlus has decided to go with an Amoled screen this time around, similar to what we saw on the OnePlus X. Amoled screens typically aren't as bright as IPS LCD screens, and that remains the case even with the OnePlus 3. There is however a polarising layer that assists legibility under bright sunlight. Although it isn't as crisp as the 1440x2560-pixel screens on many flagship phones these days, it's suitably sharp and will give you an excellent picture.

SPECIFICATIONS

• The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC is finally picking up some steam, and is now on a handful of devices available in India.Not only does the OnePlus 3 have this SoC clocked at 2.2GHz for two cores and 1.6GHz for the other two cores, but it also sports a colossal 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of internal storage (non-expandable).
• Apart from this, there's also dual-SIM 4G connectivity with support for both FDD-Band 3 and TDD-Band 40, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, and NFC. The phone has a 3000mAh non-removable battery, and is the company's first device to feature some kind of fast charging technology. It comes bundled with a 20W Dash Charger, which charges the phone up to 60 percent in 30 minutes. About an hour's charging should fully top up your phone even from near zero. Charging and connectivity are through a USB 2.0 Type-C port, and the cable included in the box allows for ordinary connectivity with most computers and chargers thanks to one end being a standard USB Type-A plug.

SOFTWARE

• On the software front, the OnePlus 3 is powered by OxygenOS 3.1.1, based on Android 6.0.1. OxygenOS is visually and functionally very similar to stock Android Marshmallow, with a few useful additions. Despite not being quite as light as stock Android, it still retains the same level of ease and snappiness across the system.
• Additions come in the form of customisation options, while most of Marshmallow's standout features have been maintained. This includes the revamped app permissions system, Now On Tap, and Doze Mode. OxygenOS also lets you quickly unlock the bootloader, which will then allow you to root your device or flash new firmware if you choose to.
• Some interesting customisation options include the ability to activate a 'dark mode' which changes the colour of the menus to dark shades, custom LED notification light colours for different functions, and button customisation controls. It's an excellent set of options for power users, combining all the goodness of stock Android Marshmallow with some of the customisation smarts that aftermarket firmware such as CyanogenMod gives you, and we absolutely love it

CAMERA

• The primary camera of the OnePlus 3 is a 16-megapixel Sony IMX 298 sensor, while the front camera has an 8-megapixel sensor with 1.4-micron pixels. The rear camera can shoot video at up to 4K and can also shoot slow motion video at 120fps, while the front camera can shoot video at up to 1080p at 30fps. Additionally, the rear camera features optical image stabilisation, phase detection autofocus and RAW image format support.
• Videos are excellent and detailed even at full-HD resolution, and you always have the option to go up to 4K if you want them sharper. Slow motion and time lapse modes produce interesting results, but more control over both of these, and possibly the inclusion of 240fps shooting, would have been great additions to the camera. The front camera takes surprisingly sharp pictures as well, producing much better results than what we're used to seeing from typical smartphones. On the whole, the camera is more than adequate for ordinary smartphone shooting.

PERFORMANCE

• As has been the case with the two Snapdragon 820-powered smartphones that we've reviewed so far this year, the OnePlus 3 is an absolute powerhouse. From playing games to loading Web pages; from starting up apps to taking pictures; everything just works well. It's helped along no doubt by the generous 6GB of RAM.The phone running smoothly even under heavy use. Essentially, this is hands-down the most powerful Android smartphone we've used so far.

VERDICT

• After three previous attempts, OnePlus has finally managed to get everything right with the OnePlus 3. This is a phone which excels in every department, and OnePlus has even fixed the issues we had with reliability and build quality on some of its previous devices. The inclusion of important features such as NFC, an accurate fingerprint sensor, an excellent Amoled screen and fast charging also finally means that this is a phone that checks all of the boxes.

PROS

• Great design and build
• Record-breaking performance
• Decent battery life
• Superb software
• Fast and accurate fingerprint sensor

CONS

• Sub-par low-light photography
• No expandable storage

OVERALL RATING IS: 4/5

OS	OxygenOS based on Android Marshmallow
RAM	6 GB
Item Weight	159 g
Product Dimensions	15.3 x 0.7 x 7.5 cm
Item model number	OnePlus 3
Wireless communication technologies	Bluetooth, WiFi Hotspot
Connectivity technologies	GSM, (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WiFi
Special features	Dual SIM,GPS,Music Player,Video Player,Fingerprint sensor,Hall sensor,Accelerometor,Gyroscope,Proximity sensor,Ambient light sensor,eCompass,E-mail
Other camera features	16MP primary camera and 8MP front facing camera
Form factor	Touchscreen Phone
Weight	160 Grams
Colour	Graphite
Battery Power Rating	3000
Whats in the box	OnePlus 3, Screen Protector (pre-applied), Dash Charge Type-C Cable, Dash Charge Adapter, SIM Tray Ejector and Quick Start Guide