Unboxing experience and Build Quality Coming from an HTC One M9 device, a luxurious phone with gold rails on the sides at a hefty $650 price tag at launch, I was too skeptical about what can a $400 offer to me, especially when considering the fact that OnePlus is not that known in the region; it was quite a risk for me, a big gamble. But it was a complete flip after all. Pulling up that white top of the box greeted me immediately with the device, a letter from Carl Pei thanking me for my choice, some manuals and some OnePlus Never Settle stickers and the SIM ejection tool. Popping in my SIM card, I was then caught by a nice gesture from the company – a preinstalled screen protector. It might be just a simple plastic based screen protector and not a fancy glass one, but still definitely a nice touch from them, considering that it will be extremely hard to find any OnePlus accessories around here. It does not stop at that, the build quality of the phone feels like a premium one. This aluminum graphite-grey chassis with its 7.35 mm thin profile and the dark grey antenna lines, the phone looks and feels very nice in your hands. Bezels on the front of the phone are crazy thin on the sides, and are reasonably thin on the top and the bottom, complimented by that ceramic capacitive fingerprint scanner and two subtly lit capacitive buttons sitting on the sides of that fingerprint scanner, with the latter doubling up as a capacitive home button. On the bottom side of the phone, you have a bottom firing mono speaker, a USB type-C port and – thankfully – a 3.5 mm headphone jack. On the right side you have a very tactile power button, with the volume rocker and their priceless 'alert slider', continuing the trend set by the OnePlus 2 and the OnePlus X, on the left side. The top is left clean with no further features like an IR blaster for example, possibly following the trend of newer phones ditching it. Build quality is very nice, especially when considering the price tag this phone carries, though there is no fancy sandstone material used there, and the company chose to leave it for the cases to remind you where they stopped last year. There has been a lot of attention paid to details as far as I can tell, volume buttons are neither wobbly nor tight to click on, and their position is optimal in my opinion; never felt that power button is too high or too low as well as the volume rocker. And that alert slider is textured quite well too. However it is not all dandy, there is a very noticeable protrusion of the back camera that may be annoying for some and worrying for the other, but during my usage without any cases applied to cover that protrusion, that camera hump survived well with no cracks or major scratches. Some may argue that OnePlus played it too safe with the design, with an unimaginative rectangular metal slab with some subtle curves at the corner and ditching their sandstone fanciness, but that phone is a beauty to hold and a pleasure to be held naked. Holding the phone with one hand is manageable, but may not be that comfortable for those with smaller hands. Even me with my medium-sized hands can be exposed to some thumb gymnastics when pulling down the notifications shade or tapping on that settings icon at the top, or reaching the left side of the screen, since there is no curving to the phone's back or anything like that, which make it quite risky when doing so without two hands since it may be a bit slippery. But that is fine for phones in such a size. However, the phone is not extremely big when holding it one-handed, thanks to that tiny bezels that continue to grow as a trend in modern flagships to maximize the screen-to-body ratio. Ultimately, holding that phone is a pleasure, it never felt too cheap or anything like that. All my boxes are ticked with that design save for that comically protruding camera hump at the back, though it is protected well at the sides.
PerformanceFor a $400 phone, you shouldn't expect much in this area, but the OnePlus 3 raised the bar too high. Being equipped with all the top notch hardware you would expect from a $600+ phone, namely the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and the UFS 2.0 storage, with the latter being missed out in some flagships like the HTC 10 for instance, coupled with a lightweight Oxygen OS with minimal additions over stock android, this phone swears to be a premium flagship phone worth a lot more than its price. Not to mention that whopping 6 GB LPDDR4 RAM, which has its potential fully unlocked with the recent software updates, this phone handles everything with no hassle. Opening the apps is a breeze. Loading a web-page is ridiculously fast. Launching the camera cannot be faster. Everything is handled in a spectacularly quick manner. It even outclasses its UFS 2.0 comrades; the Galaxy S7 duo.
Something to note here as well, the Oxygen OS now will not get in the way while using the phone. This time, the company took their ample time to optimize their Oxygen OS to be staggeringly fast and buttery smooth. Gone are the days where you would face an ugly uncharacterized layer which stands in the way that struggles to operate the phone the way it should with its specs with some weird bugs in even weirder places. The latest iteration of Oxygen OS is a lot more mature than what you can experience with that of last year's flagship killer – which actually did not kill any phone last year. There may be some strange decisions in the OS though that may not utilize the hardware under the hood fully, like limiting the background opened apps to conserve battery life, which is not 100% true, and some minor bugs, which wasn't anything extreme to ruin your experience as you would experience from last year's OS version. But I believe it is much nearer to the other refined UI you can find from HTC and Nexus phones. The core experience of this year's Oxygen OS feels a lot better and smoother than before. Last but not the least, OnePlus' has provided numerous updates to that phone to cure it from any reported bugs on their forums. I have been receiving updates from Oxygen OS 3.1.2 to 3.1.3 to 3.2.1 to 3.2.2 with a lot of bug fixes and optimizations, as well as solving critical conflicts like the needless background apps capping for a device with an edge above a lot of the contenders in the flagship arena when having 6 GB of RAM, even the latest and the greatest of Samsung's Note line still has 4 gigs of RAM. Some may argue that this staggeringly smooth experience may be due to the GPU pushing only a 1080p screen, so it has less overhead work, but we all know that the 1080p screen can be easily managed even with the last gen Adreno 430 and even the older Adreno 420. Thankfully OnePlus took their sweet time when it comes to software optimization, and we must applaud them for that.
If you are looking for some synthetic benchmarks, then go search for them, they barely say the whole story and just bloat the reviews with some barely relevant indicators of how smooth and fast the phone feels and behaves in real life, and we all know how it is fairly easy to fake benchmark scores and cheat those apps to fool you with synthetic numbers and dazzling scores. Let's keep it to that.
Gaming on this device was a pleasure to say the least, buttery smooth and loading times were spectacularly low and thermals were kept in check. The device remained just warm with no major concerns. Temperature readings remained sub-40c, which is just lukewarm and did not feel uncomfortably hot like other devices. The heat is majorly felt at the top third of the device from the back and slightly felt at the glass. I am not that of a gamer, but I was having my medium-load games, like Marvel Future Fight for instance, running perfectly fine. Even games like Real Racing 3, one of the biggest melons for almost any android phone, ran very smooth. Loading the levels was quick enough and the race itself never felt too jiggery or stuttered. Sadly though, that bottom mounted mono speaker is easily muffled, though that large form factor helped me evade blocking the grille partially.
CameraStillsI am not that into photography, but good camera performance on my mobile is definitely appreciated to keep your memorial shots perfect. And with more recent flagships, the bar was raised too high in the camera department. Now we can see some awesome still shots captured by a phone camera; there is a remarkable jump in the camera performance in the last 2 years, with OEMs paying more details to more than just the MP count, like the aperture and the pixel size, stabilization techniques, Autofocus speed and accuracy, and probably more that I may not know about. Premium flagships are nailing it when it comes to pics this year, and the OnePlus 3 is no exception.
Normally when looking at phones in this $400 price tag, the camera performance usually take a hit to cut down the corners and justify the price. But OnePlus never settles with that, continuing their trend they started with their previous phone, packing very decent camera hardware, particularly a 16 MP sensor IMX 298, which has a respectable 1.12-micron pixel size, coupled with both OIS and PDAF system, leaving the Laser Assisted AF system in the shadows of last year, and an aperture size of f/2.0 to capture more light. This set of hardware on paper sounds good yet not exceptional when compared to the competition, but in real life, the OnePlus 3 continues to deliver surprisingly nice results in that area as well. Post processing is not harsh and the noise is sanely reduced without being overdone and smudging the photos resulting in loss of details. Compression ratio is quite adequate as well. Dynamic Range is also high enough and Auto-HDR kicks in the right time to ensure the right exposure is always in place. In daylight, photos came up quite colorful and crispy, albeit not oversaturated like what the S7 favors to do. The phone tends to overexpose a little bit like all other phones, but nothing extreme that can blow the highlights and ruin your photos. Daylight photos have never been that challenging to phones since last year actually, and that was kind of expected. Nevertheless, this phone still performs better than previous flagships like the HTC One M9 for instance.
Moving on to some backlit scenarios, the phone still continues to deliver. Dynamic range was very good, and when Auto-HDR kicked in, it never took so long to process the image either, which is nice to see. Details were not compromised with some oversharpening or any extra compression as well, thanks to sane post-processing.
As the sun goes down, it starts to show some of its shortcomings. That relatively small pixel size collects less light in the picture, and therefore the pictures can get a bit darker than other phones, though the pics are still pleasing to look at. Thanks to its sane post-processing and color production, the pics are still nice and better than almost all the phones at that price range. Impressive enough, the phones are not ruined by oversaturated color production or aggressive sharpening and noise canceling techniques like what the S7 camera does, and the photos are much brighter than the iPhone 6s camera for instance. Despite the challenging light conditions, the phone was able to focus well, albeit not crazy fast like the Galaxy S7's Dual-pixel AF tech for example, however there were no photos coming up out of focus or blurred foreground. In very low light conditions, the photos may possess some graininess, and here where HQ mode comes handy. Briefly said, it is a post processing algorithm that eliminates that graininess and tries to boost the highlights in the pics in an attempt to retrieve more obvious details generally in the pics. It is nothing ground-breaking, but it can be quite a good tool to have sometimes. Flipping the phone to the selfie cam, photos were good enough and my face was not comically smudged. Wasn't fond of selfies so couldn't tell how good it fares when compared to the other phones out there.
Where does that put it in the competition? Well it is quite good I have to say, for 400 bucks, you are having more than what you get from any phone at that price range. Even when compared to the premium flagships, it is very respectable. Excellent daylight performance and very solid low light performance leave it in the upper part of the spectrum within the likes of the LG G5, HTC 10 and the iPhone 6s, beating some phones like the Galaxy S7 and probably much more others.
Here is a link to some photos I have captured, maybe they can make it easier for you to judge how that camera performs.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https:...sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHS1JNDhuAmgDd4eLXqzxGvSI_DJw
Video recordingStills were generally amazing on that phone, but sadly videos lacked a bit. Starting first with the fact that this phone does not offer you a 1080p 60 fps option, it may be quite a bummer for some people, leaving you only with the 1080p 30 fps option and the 4K 30 fps option, though the hardware possessed is never lacking at all, leaving us scratching our heads why such an option is not available. However, thankfully it supports 4K recording, unlike its comrade, namely the Xperia X Performance.
I was never into video recording, I usually use a video recorder or a digital camera when recording videos, and most people will be as well I guess. But there was some slight wobbling when recording the video, even when the phone is at steady position; the video wobbles at the corners weirdly. OIS performance is a little bit poor when compared to other phones, though the phone never develops some weird continuous hunting for focus or major shakes, just this wobbling that is more noticeable at the sides of the video, especially the corners. It is more like a rotary motion around the center of the viewfinder back and forth alternatively on the sides for those who cannot imagine it, though it is a minor one. 1080p videos were fine generally, but 4K videos had some strange compression artifacts when recording that could not be justified since we are talking about 4K recording. Sound recording was not that good; noise cancelation was overly used. However, OnePlus was responsive enough to provide a quick hefty update with a lot of hot fixes, including an upgrade to the codec to decrease the compression ratio to tame those strange artifacts and improve the noise cancelation algorithm, making a dramatic improvement in sound recording, especially when voice recording, but still needs some work to be done there, and that wobbling has been reduced as well.
Battery life and Thermals
One of the most impressive things in this phone is the battery life and the thermals. I have been having this phone for over a week, with different usage patterns, from as light as reading to as heavy as converting video podcasts to mp3 file on that phone, and I am really struggling to find anything to complain about in that area. Thermal wise, it is the coolest phone I have ever held in my hands; it barely gets too warm to touch, even in the toughest circumstances like being directly exposed to the sun. Battery readings has been mostly around 32-33c with bumps to 34c when browsing the internet or having my usual fare of time spent on the social media. Even if you brutally use this whopping 6-gigs RAM, it rarely hits the 35c. This is one of the coolest phones I have ever held up till that moment, nothing comes close to its spectacular thermals, thanks to the internal design of the phone, where the SoC resides away from the battery in the upper third of the phone, sandwiched between the aluminum back of the phone and the screen, though not as near to the screen as the positioning of the SoC in last year's OnePlus 2, with the battery oppositely placed in the lower third of the phone, not to mention the massive contribution of the large form factor of the phone which allows way more heat dissipation, especially with that aluminum stylish sturdy build. Of course we have got improved thermal performance with that new custom core design of the new Snapdragon 820's Kryo cores and the more efficient 14 nm FinFet manufacturing node process.
What makes it even more compelling is the fact that the phone is not throttling at all, even during my favorite sustainable 100% CPU load test, which is converting a 1-hour video podcast to mp3, a scenario where it requires every bit of horsepower from those big Kryos, it just raised the temps from a relatively warm 33c to 37c, which is very impressive indeed. Bear in mind, ambient was not that cool, and the phone was put on a glass table, so there is a possibility that the phone could have performed even better thermal-wise! The rate at which the phone kept converting the file was consistently at its maximum rate of 1900 KB/s. and looking at the Trepn graph of the CPU, the big cluster was at its max frequency the whole time and the device did not throttle the big cluster at all, while the little cluster was ready to take other tasks! So that indicates that even in the most challenging CPU tasks, where the big cluster keeps holding on its max achievable frequency, the device does not become uncomfortably warm or too hot to touch.
Moving away from those theoretical tests and measurements, and more towards the regular end customers, this phone is a killer. No words can describe how amazed I am from the phone thermal wise. Battery life was very nice as well, leaving me most of the time with 5+ hrs of screen-on time over more than 24 hrs of total usage, and my usual fare of off-screen music playback. I can even reach 6 hrs of screen-on time with some conservation like using Dark Mode, which is awesome on that screen to be honest, and lowering the adaptive brightness level to favor lower brightness levels. Even when having some gaming included, you can make it through the day comfortably, though some may miss the last few midnight hours when back home. That is a B+ or even an A- in my book. Some may be left annoyed though with its decreased battery capacity when compared to its predecessor, and the fact that they favored a thin profile with a comically protruding camera hump over filling the rest of the phone with battery, but that 3000 mAh is not tiny and you won't have any problem in making it through the day.
Even those who can't make it to midnight without ample charge, plug it in the Dash charger for 30 minutes while having a long bath, and enjoy more than 60% of juice, and if you waited longer than an hour by a little bit, you have your adorable toy fully charged. Rest assured, your phone won't explode or burn your hands while being topped up, but the brick might be a bit warmer than what you would expect, but that is natural, considering the fact that all the temperature and current regulation is done in the charging brick itself, and the fact that this brick can pump up to 4 amps to your phone, but that is nothing to worry about, and I am sure that this exquisitely fast charging will be very much appreciated by a lot. It is not only about how quick it can top up my phone's battery, but the confidence it gives to you that you can make it through the day, even if you plugged your phone for less than an hour or even if you gave it a small 10-minute rest. It has changed my charging habits of leaving the phone in the charger overnight, since plugging in the phone for 30 minutes while having my breakfast and taking a quick shower will certainly give my phone battery ample battery to last through the day, and if I waited till getting dressed up, I can have it fully charged.
Here are some stats I have collected:
Day 1 (46% used)
Screen-on time: 2 hrs 43 minutes // Total time: 16 hrs 20 minutes
Day 2 (75% used)
Screen-on time: 5 hrs 22 minutes // Total time: 15 hrs 19 minutes
Day 3 (90% used)
Screen-on time: 6 hrs 13 minutes // Total time: 16 hrs 35 minutes
Day 4 (88% used)
Screen-on time: 5 hrs 33 minutes // Total time: 20 hrs 54 minutes
Day 5 (93% used)
Screen-on time: 5 hrs 50 minutes // Total time: 22 hrs 35 minutes
Day 6 (53% used)
Screen-on time: 3 hrs 27 minutes // Total time: 12 hours 37 minutes
AudioSpeakers
Coming from an M9, I was really worried about that move. It was so hard for me to leave those legendary one-of-a-kind dual front firing speakers with this 5.1 ch surround effect, courtesy of Dolby's technologies and HTC's killer hardware packed inside that aluminum chassis. So it took some time to cope with that weird placement of the speaker, though Apple is still convinced that this is the best place to put the speaker in, to the extent that they will build upon that placement with their dual yet bottom facing speakers dedicated for audiophiles ironically!
Moving on to the star of the show, the OnePlus 3, I moved my usual set of music sets, which involve some club, trap, EDM, PDB mixes and some trances, and fired up a club set. I was surprised it was able to push it that loud actually. The bass was fuller than expected and not that thin, however, just like every smartphone out there, the "boomy" part of the song was not that audible, and the lower mids were a tiny bit higher than my taste. Vocals were crystal clear though, and the trebles weren't muffled. Overall it was very balanced produced sound and a very enjoyable experience. Up till 13/15 of the volume and there is no distortion. Higher than that, you start to feel some little sharpness in the sound; it is a mobile small mono speaker after all and that is expected, we aren't having any kind of woofers here. With that being said, I really think that this mono speaker surpasses all its other comrades, including the so-called iPhone 6s', which we will get to in a minute. My recommendation will remain to be not bumping up the speakers any higher than 12/15, just like any other speaker in any android [/STIKE] phone out there, should you use the phone's speaker to listen to your podcasts and such mixes
Compared to the iPhone 6s, a very close contender with the same speaker setup, I think that the decibel output is much higher on the OnePlus 3 by a great extent. To match the iPhone 6s' volume, I had to tone down the OnePlus 3 to 11/15, since comparing those at max volume would be unfair and arguably inaccurate. But what differs is the way they are "calibrated" or tuned out of the box. The iPhone 6s may possess more oomph in the lower "boomy" part of the bass, though the mids lack quite a bit and sound muffled when compared to the OnePlus 3. And the highs were a little bit overstated. I guess that speaker tuning is more like Beats faulty calibration, while the OnePlus 3's speaker tuning is approaching more of a balanced sound, where there are some sense of "flatness" in the sound by its nature, which is the norm, since bass will always lack in such small speakers, and to me, this is much better than Apple's endeavors to artificially emulate a Woofer's bass pronunciation on such a mono speaker with small drivers, which is done by massively increasing the dynamic bass and the clarity, consequently muffling the rest of the frequencies, particularly the mids, where it sounds like a far-fetched voice. In such a dueling battle, I favor the speaker of the OnePlus 3 over the iPhone's, since it is much more accurate when playing the music and sounds a lot louder with no audible distortion that may ruin your experience. Of course, rest assured, you will hear your ringtone from that phone pretty well, you cannot go wrong with that. Comparing any of the OnePlus 3 or even the iPhone 6s to any of the HTC 10, M9 or even the M8, will be really unfair, as the experience is so much different in my opinion. However I might try my best to do such a detailed comparison, but even if I did, my perspective of such a comparison will remain the same.
Of course the usual drawbacks of a mono speaker apply here; the separation between the lows and the highs will not be that great, though I still feel like all the frequency bands are produced correctly from that speaker, and you won't get any type of fancy immersive effects like the 5.1 ch surround effect of the M9 or an awesome Hi-Fi speaker experience like the HTC 10 with its woofer-tweeter setup, not to mention how easy it is to block that speaker grille and muffle it when gaming for instance, though that relatively larger form factor helps a bit, but not that much sadly. Of course it was too weird for me when watching YouTube to have that one-ear experience with no love for the other; it took me quite a bit to cope with that. Nevertheless, for a single mono speaker on a phone, this remains one of the best –if not the best- in that territory; the mono bottom facing speaker.
Plugged in HTC's earphones
Now it is no secret that OnePlus skips shipping a OnePlus branded pair of earphones, though I believe such a company can make some great earphones like HTC's from what I have been treated with from my experience with that phone. Ironically, they made a OnePlus branded VR headset, and skipped a pair of OnePlus headphones! I went ahead and plugged in my HTC in-ear buds, and went ahead. Max volume is very good actually; it actually exceeded my expectations for a $400 phone to be honest. It was surprising in the best way possible! It clearly hits the sweet spot for my ears when maxed out, more like a 13(.5)/15 of the M9's volume for those who are wondering. Those extra two volume steps on the M9 were useless for me when using the earbuds actually; they used to irritate my ear drums and it was too loud for me to enjoy the music, possibly due to the M9's noise levels, which continued to impress on the OnePlus 3 as well; noise levels were amazingly low when hearing my club mixes. There was very decent depth in the audio played, all the instruments were audible. The tracks also were correctly produced in terms of frequency response. Of course I have no technical data measured, but the default audio was very balanced. The bass was not that full by default, but with the aid of a simple EQ from Google's Play music app –something that we as HTC users dreamt to have on our $600+ phones, at least till the M9– I perfected the audio output in the headphones to my personal liking, and the audio experience was really enjoyable. That really impressed me, however, the surround virtualizer in that EQ was actually not that mind-blowing; it widened the soundstage and strangely the middle part of the bass low frequencies was bumped up, which was nice, but trebles started to lack, so I ditched it after all. But hey we have it at least; the M9 had that feature intentionally (or not? maybe they did not know it is there!) disabled in its config file! Now here is where the OnePlus 3 starts to lack a little tiny bit, stereo separation between the two channels. I can't say exactly how much it lacks exactly when compared to the M9, but in some instances when the drums hit quite frequently in the left ear after the right ear, or in some computer-done mixes and effects where it rapidly changes between the right and left ear, stereo crosstalk crept in little bit when compared to the M9. When compared to the iPhone 6s, it was almost the same. It is something to note, nothing deal breaking or anything that can stop you from enjoying your music. My recommendation is to remain sub 13/15 like any device as well.
Other than that I have nothing to complain about. Everything is perfected! Noise levels are extremely low, lower than the M9's - especially with BoomSound enabled. Max volume is loud enough and not that overpowered. Don't like the default sound? You have an EQ, with two bars for bass boosting and Surround sound emulating, and a 5-band simple yet effective EQ with some presets pre-installed if you would like to try. Very punchy crisp sound is produced, with nice depth, which brings all music to your ears. Just those coming from an M9 or any HTC device will notice that creepy stereo crosstalk, but it is still better than almost all the phones maybe. It is enough to say it still within the same level of the bitten fruit
Plugged in a 2.1 ch Subwoofer
Plugging in my AUX cable from the 2.1 ch Sub-Woofer set, I went ahead and fired up my favorite club mix, with high spirits as of what I have heard from the OnePlus 3 with the HTC Earbuds, and I was not let down at all. My amusement continued to grow on this device. I was treated with the same amazingly low noise levels and that zero distortion as well! The lower-part of the bass was blasting the Woofer, without being distorted or "overpowered". Treble was not lacking. And if you do not like how it sounds, Google Play Music's EQ is your friend. And with that being a Sub-Woofer set, that stereo crosstalk is not noticeable at all. Max volume was enough for me to fill the house with my music, just like what the M9 and the iPhone 6s used to do.
Overall audio experience
This device is a definite green light for audiophiles on a budget. This phone swears to be an audio veteran, and within its price tag, you will never ever find anything that sounds better than that phone, maybe the far-fetched ZTE Axon flagship. It even blows some $600+ flagships out of the water, like the galaxy S7 for instance or the LG G5 with its built in standard Snapdragon 820 DAC, which is the same used on the OnePlus. And it does not stop at that, it is a very close runner-up to the audio classics like the LG V10 and the HTC One M9. It even sniffs the socks of the iPhone 6s headset-wise and gives it a good run for its money speakers-wise. Of course I am pretty sure the HTC 10 will be in a league of its own, but I believe we have a very close contender here. This phone won't let you down in that area, either hooked up to a cable, or on its own bare speaker, it still sounds spectacular. Even for me, a man who is not that fond of phone's speakers when listening to music, I still like how that speaker sounds. Great job OnePlus!
Some things to note…
1-Stereo crosstalk is a measurement of how distinct the 2 analogue channels are, or rather more technically, how much signal leaking from each channel falsely to the other, which makes the music produced tending to be more towards the mono side. The lower the stereo crosstalk, the more you feel both channels are separated, the better the audio quality from each channel. On the OnePlus 3, it was low enough for a pleasing experience, though there are phones out there having less stereo crosstalk, though not that much really.
2- It was noted that the device calls up a 'device' when playing any sounds via speaker in the Audio Mods thread of the OnePlus 3, which is believed to be an amplifier dedicated to the speaker made by Qualcomm, hence the loud but clear audio output from that speaker.
3- This phone utilizes Dirac's latest tech; the Dirac Power Sound, which is a digital speaker optimization solution engineered by both OnePlus and Dirac engineers. Simply said, it is like a pair of correction glasses that corrects, instead of correcting eyesight, the frequency response dynamically within each volume step to ensure minimal distortion even when cranked up at max volume, hence the loud but clear output from this speaker. However, they denied the fact that OnePlus uses another Dirac solution for the headphone jack, and I could not find what this device uses to enhance the audio experience that much.
4- Pairing that device to a JBL Flip 3 continued to impress me as well, it was very close to the HTC One M9 and I may say it had a more powerful bass, and a slightly warmer sound when compared to the M9, which likes to be on the colder, thinner part. At maximum volume it was very loud as well, just like the M9 I believe.
5- When plugged in the HTC's in-ear buds, the max volume of the OnePlus 3 is the same as the iPhone 6s, with the latter having less audible bass lines than the slightly warmer sound of the former – by default.
Other things to note1- Call quality has been quite decent, no complaints from both sides
2- Fingerprint scanner is blazing fast and accurate, wasn't expecting that from a $400 phone
3- The alert slider is quite nice to have and is easily configurable
4- There is an sRGB mode hidden in the developer options for those who want the most accurate colors possible, though it may be a bit dim or warm for most people's eyes compared to the vivid NTSC standard used by default
5- The screen is legible under sunlight, but there are phones that can have higher maximum brightness.
6- Auto-brightness may be a bit too slow to respond to the varying lighting conditions; sometimes it is a bit too dim or too bright.
7- Network connectivity is fine, though handling multiple downloads is not that great. WiFi reception is good and the range is comparable to what you can find in flagships
8- Some may argue that only a 1080p resolution on that 5.5" AMOLED screen is not that sufficient, but it is sharp enough for me and I never saw any annoyingly obvious pixelation in the screen while using the phone.
Are you sponsored by OnePlus ?
Fine for you that you like the OnePlus 3, but personally I don't agree on everything you claimed.
Camera
I'm into photograph. So I have an other look on this subject. Indeed, phone camera has raised a lot the last few years.
But when you start saying "Excellent daylight performance and very solid low light performance leave it in the upper part of the spectrum within the likes of the LG G5, HTC 10 and the iPhone 6s, beating some phones like the Galaxy S7 and probably much more others.", I have to stop you.
I also have a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, and I assure you, the OP3 is way behind if it comes to photo-quality. Yes when looking at fullscreen on a FullHD it looks good. But I have 4K monitors at home, and then you see the real quality of these photos. I had a look at your photos on your dropbox. And they all have the same problem, they are grainy, and they have some clearly artifacts, like colors that run out. I don't see that on my photos taken with my Samsung S6 Edge (https://500px.com/photo/166547265/sunrise-at-gooik-by-paul-de-meersman?ctx_page=1&from=user&user_id=1777241).
The OP3 photos are over exposed (about 1 stop of light). It's the worst scenario you can have to recover, because you lose to much information that can not be recovered. I don't have this issue on my S6 Edge, I personalty feel that it even does the light-metering better then my 1600€ Canon reflex camera. The photo of the sunrise I posted taken with my Samsung would have been over exposed with my Canon Reflex on auto settings.
I would be surprised that the S7 has over-saturated color production or aggressive sharpening and noise canceling techniques. That is not what I have seen on photos taken with it. But I did not tried it my self. over-saturated color production wouldn't be so bad, because that can easily be corrected in post editing.
But yes for 400€ it is very good, but don't say its leveled with the performance of some flagship like the iPhone 6s or the Samsung S6.
sRGB mode
Are you kidding us, when you say that sRGB mode hidden in the developer options is for those who want the most accurate colors possible ????
I have 2 monitors that are color calibrated. When I look at the colors of my photos on the OP3 with sRGB activated, it's horrible. All my colors are lost. And yes my JPEG files include the sRGB embedded color profile.
Display build quality
Because people must also be informed about the négatifs.
A lot of people include me, have bad experiances with the display after it falls. Yes it is not made to trow on the ground. But accidents happen. In my case it felt from less then 60cm (23.6 inch) on its back, and the display is shattered and cracked over the hole surface. I never had a display broken that easy. And yes I have a lot of stupid accidents. Phone falls from the bed, table, ... but never had any issues. The only phone that I had some cracks was my Samsung S6 Edge (the reason I bought the OP3). But the S6 felt from my hands on the first floor, hitting some stairs before terminating at the tile floor. And even then the damage was a lot less then the one on the OP3. And that is remarkable because bought pretend to be Gorilla Glass 4.
I was already hesitating what i would do the day my S6 Edge would be repaired. Because I'm sure that the camera will improve with software upgrades (because the RAW files shows us that it can take better picture, only the camera information is missing or not correct in the DNG file, so you have a lot of post processing to do or the need of a camera calibration tool), it is very fast and has dual sim slot. But after my experience with the easily broken screen, and afterwards reading all the posts of other people complaining that this gorilla glass 4 screen is very fragile, I have decided that I will go back to the Samsung S6 Edge, because I already know that next time it should fall, and it will certainly, it will break again.
@dmeerpa hi
First let me start by thanking you for going through my honest review of the OnePlus 3 - nah I am not sponsored by OnePlus at all, it is just my experience.
Let's start with the camera. All these criticism is very acceptable and I did mention that overexposure issue (did I ?), however, all these errors were not so annoying to me since as I mentioned,....I am not a camera guy. And I guess that the camera quality is enough to satisfy a lot of the people using that phone. Moving photos to the 4K monitors is not that abundant I guess, but definitely appreciate your knowledgeable criticism.
The sRGB mode is not my favorite I have to say; it lacks saturation and some report it to have a yellowish hue to all the colors, I don't face that yellowish tint here, but some face it, and looks like you do as well. The situation is that, it is like a set of calibrations set to all the phones without taking care of the small variances between each display and the other. However, it definitely lacks saturation.
Your comments on build quality is so hard to test, I buy phones to use as daily driver and it is too hard for me to witness my phone that i bought with my hard-earned money fall intentionally just to see how durable it is. And I treat my phones so nicely, even when working out.
P.S. I come from an HTC One M9, and this OnePlus 3 camera is a relief. If you say the photos are grainy here, then you will be knocking your head into a brick wall when you see my M9 photos.
P.P.S looks like Google Photos ruined my photos with its "high quality" syncing option I guess that is why all the photos are so grainy and has some artifacts due to high compression... :crying:
@Mostafa Wael
First of all the main reason that I reacted was that I have the impression you are saying this is the perfect phone. It starts whit your title 'The One to rule them all'. I agree it is a great piece of hardware for an acceptable price.
Yes you did mention that overexposure issue (did I ?), but you also said just like other phones (The phone tends to overexpose a little bit like all other phones). I never had a smartphone (iPhone 3G, iPhone4, Sony Xperia ZL, HTC One M8 and the Samsung S6 Edge) and none had the overexposure issue. So somewhere I found you where hiding this minus by saying that others have it to, that is not my experience and I wanted to inform potential buyers that read your review that some people have other thoughts about it.
If you did use HDR you will have less problems because the dynamic range is much bigger. I did test the camera without HQ and HDR, so that I also had the RAW files. I tend to say that the RAW files are even more over exposed.
I believe you that upload has ruined you photos, but since I have also the OP3, I now it has those grain and other artifacts probably due to to much compression.
It depends what you want to do with the photos. Post them on social media, maybe after cropping, and yes more and more persons have 4K monitors, and when graphical cards become fast enough and cheap enough more and more gamers will settle with 4K monitors. And yes then they will visit social media on it to.
But that was not the intention of my reaction. I also look at those 4K monitors the photos taken with the Samsung S6 Edge, and I do not have the same sad experience because they are sharper and cleaner. So I just wanted to say that with the help of my 4K monitors I can clearly see that the image quality is far behind the one of the Samsung S6. And so I do not find it fair to say to potential buyers that it in the upper part of the spectrum within the likes of the LG G5, HTC 10 and the iPhone 6s, beating some phones like the Galaxy S7.
But I can believe you when you say it is a relief when coming from the HTC One M9. I had previous the HTC One M8, a lot of people where also enthusiastic about the picture quality. It as as good as Samsung, iPhone, .... I was also disappointed when I saw those camera pictures, especially in low light. So when afterwards I had the Samsung, then I was really surprised in the positive sense. So yes i'm surprised you don't like the photos from the S7.
And of course I don't expect you do some drop tests. But as this is a review, and potential buyers are reading it, i felt that I have to share this bad experience to.
And to be honest I should mention that from the other people that had the same bad experience they are also not satisfied with the way support is handling there requests.
But again, great piece of hardware, for that kind of money, if they only had a more robust display I would keep it instead of my Samsung Galaxy S6. I would help myself with RAW files, and would had hoped the fixed it with a software update.
Hope you have more luck with the phone :good:
@dmeerpa well I guess I will draw more attention to your crisis of the overexposure and, with the part of the upper spectrum thing, I meant that it is comparable to those phones. Not better, but not that behind for regular Jacks and Joes eh? For sure the phone will have more grainy shots than the S6 (1.12 micron vs 1.2 micron for the OnePlus 3 and the Galaxy S6 respectively) and for sure the bigger pixel will get more light and will be better, but still it is a solid performer in my eyes. The M9 for instance was a damn POS when hanging out with the friends at night, the OnePlus 3 manages to get some nice shots - decent enough for me to look at the pic, unlike the M9 - so, it is decent enough. Not for those who monitor the pics on 4K displays and can be quite "meh-ing" for those people.
BTW, Galaxy S6 is still better in my eyes than the S7. I really saw that over sharpening, it loses some details. I still believe that the S6 has more beautiful shots (says a friend of mine who had both)
Do you think my camera part deserves an overall redo? I mean, if I drawn more attention to the overexposure issue and the grainy shots in extreme low light, would it be sufficient ?
Btw, for this phone, I have two perspectives
1- comparing the phone with other phones in the same price range (man that phone raises the bar too high and it feels unfair for me )
2- comparing the phone with its respectable category/tier. This is a flagship phone so it shall face some of the top dogs as they say in some areas.
3- reviewing the phone as a whole package and does it satisfy me in my day-to-day usage or do I feel the need for something better, which is what most of the people look at. I may not recognise the issue with the photos of it being a bit grainy and may be quite meh when looking at the photos on the 4K displays as I personally do not own a one myself, but it has never been a catch for most of the internet citizens as far as I saw. I am not saying that your opinion is negligible, make no mistake absolutely, but...for the mean time, viewing photos on 4K displays is not that major, no?
About that issue of support, well of course I had no issues obliging me to ship my phone to the online support, but there has been an xda article in the portal that has discussed the way the technical support manage the faulty shipped units, perhaps I should link to that in my review.
Please let me know if there is anything misleading in your opinion. Thanks for the thorough walkthrough of my review, definitely appreciated
Last summer I purchased an Xperia 1 II which I really liked for a lot of reasons - the screen, form factor and feel were all great. Unfortunately, the camera was not up to much and really struggled in low light conditions as well as capturing moving objects. As a camera is one of the top priorities for me in a phone, I made the switch and got the Pixel 5. The camera on the Pixel is brilliant and I am happy enough with the phone for now but the small screen and medium-range specs are definitely a shame.
Having seen some brilliant reviews of the S21 Ultra, my interest has been piqued and I am considering pre-ordering. I am also conscious though that reviews often don't really give a thorough, in-depth review of camera capabilities in different everyday situations (often just focusing on headline specs and flashy new features). Having read the S20 Ultra forum, I noticed a lot of negativity around autofocus, images in low light conditions, images of moving subjects and video quality. This goes back a way but having previously had S6 & S7, I thought the cameras were OK but often a little unnatural/beautified.
Does the S21 Ultra appear to be rectifying these issues and will the camera/video quality be on a par with the likes of Pixel 5 & iPhone 12 Pro Max? For the price of the phone, I would really expect it to be very top end.
Tmel14 said:
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know this is very rude of me, but I didn't read, too long of a message lol, and I'm so tired rn. But if you want good camera reviews, you can check DxOMark.
It's my reference for cameras.
Here's the S21 Article
I've read/watched a ton of reviews, many of which offered direct comparisons to the iPhone 12 Pro Max, and a few also included the Pixel 5 (not as many, as it's not considered a top tier phone any more). They all seem to be very capable. If I were to try to average all the reviews and build a consensus, I appears they are very comparable in standard everyday shots. They trade blows here and there, but generally very similar. The iPhone still wins in portrait shots. It also seems to have a slight edge in video. Night shots are tougher to judge, some had the iPhone ahead, some the S21. The S21 was the CLEAR winner in macro and zoom, as well as features. It seemed they generally gave the overall win to the S21, because the categories where the S21 won it did so with greater margins than the iPhone, where it's wins were tighter. And also because the wider range of capabilities made it a more flexible camera. But if the extreme close and extreme far don't fall into your typical usage, the iPhone would probably come out ahead.
It's also probably worth mentioning that Apple is generally pretty polished, and the iPhone 12 has been out for a bit. It's not unusual for Samsung to be a bit rough at release, and take several updates to tweak things. The two phones probably aren't at equal levels of maturity. Being an S20U owner, I can confirm there were definitely some improvements over time. The S20U camera setup was a complete change from the previous generation, while the S21U is more of a refinement on that. So it may not have as much room for improvement as the S20 did. But there's probably a decent chance that it might close some gaps where the iPhone wins, and/or increase some leads where the iPhone loses.
The differencies are minimal. Really. It is like chicken soup vs tomato soup. I did buy S21 Ultra due to the pen. S21U has clearly better camera than P30Pro. But S21U vs i12pro/i13pro vs Pixel 5/6 ... c'mon. If you like to have the best possible photos buy Vivo x70Pro+
I have S21U and wife has Iphone 13PM. Both has pros and cons. From my day to day experience, this is what I found, comparing S21U and the iPhone:
iPhone pros:
- Very fast shutter speed on camera.
- Sharper video overall, especially for night videos.
- camera app very optimized. Everything feels so smooth.
- better camera focus for indoor photos.
iPhone cons:
- white balance is so bad. Every photos turn yellowish, white sometimes turn into blue.
- too much post photo processing, especially true in clouds. Normal cloudy days turn into storm looking clouds.
- over sharpening. Took a photo of wall calendar on the wall, everything else seems bit blurry but the numbers are sharp (not in a good way, like a Photoshop overshaperning).
- portrait photos not as capable as S21U. Hardly take a clear portrait photo of moving kids (1 clear shots out of 6 shots).
- lens flare. Haven't tried night shots yet with the main cam, but the selfie does has this issue.
- no zoom 10x. Once you have this, you will want them on your phone.
- very dimmed videos at night.
- stabilization not as good, very noticeable on 3x lens.
S21U Pros:
- very versatile camera system with 3x, 10x zoom lens.
- white balance most of the time is correct - true to life
- 108 MP shots are a great option to capture extra details
- top notch stabilization on videos and photos even for zoom lens
- portrait photos are better than the iPhone, capture less shaky photos for moving objects with a better blurring object identification.
S21u cons:
- slower shutter speed. Not very usable when taking moving objects indoor
- indoor focus sometimes off, need to click the screen to focus the object.
- camera app not as smooth as iPhone
- color sometimes can be not as true as real life
Those are what I have found so far on my daily basis.