The OnePlus One Review
by Joshua Ho on November 19, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
- OnePlus
Display
Within the past few years, smartphone displays have improved immensely. Color rendition, peak brightness, contrast, resolution, viewing angles, and power draw have all improved since the first modern smartphones that appeared in 2007. Of course, while it was once possible to judge relative quality in displays by subjective comparison, most smartphones no longer have TN displays or poor maximum brightness. In order to better test displays, we turn to SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 with a custom workflow.
In the basics, we see that the OnePlus One has a reasonably bright display and acceptable display contrast, although there's room to improve in both. OnePlus has also done a good job of making sure that their display gets dim enough for night time reading, as minimum brightness is around 4.2 nits. Viewing angles are also great. While contrast with viewing angle changes isn't as good as AMOLED panels, I don't see any color shifting with viewing angle changes. This seems to remain an advantage of IPS panels for now.
In grayscale, we see that the white balance is just a bit blue, but there really isn’t a big issue there. The OnePlus One sets a record for grayscale accuracy. I would like to see a bit better color balance at the higher scales, but it's really just nitpicking. Specifically, red needs to be bumped up to be in line with green and blue. It's understandable why this is done though, as the display's backlight will be the weakest in red in general.
In the saturation sweep, OnePlus has done a great job to make sure that colors are as accurate as possible. The only issue here is that the red, magenta, and blue is a bit weaker than it should be. Some extra saturation would definitely tighten up the accuracy here in addition to making the display more appealing than it is now. However, the display is still incredibly well-calibrated, and will be more than accurate enough for general use.
The strong showing in the saturation sweep helps carry the OnePlus One through to do well in the ColorChecker. For the most part, we see that much of the error comes from the issues previously discussed with grayscale. The display overall is great, and while it isn’t perfect, it’s really just nitpicking at this point. The OnePlus One manages to display colors more accurate than almost everything on the market. The only real issue I've noticed with this display is that there's a bit more IPS glow than I'd like when shifting viewing angles.
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nspyraishn - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I would contend the "too big to use with one hand" issue is overblown. I have been using it for a while now and have no problem using it with one hand. MMV, but claiming "it's almost impossible to use it comfortably with one hand" is just plain not accurate, and reflects a strong bias by the reviewers against larger phones. I would contend that if you used the phone a bit longer, you would likely come to appreciate the larger "phablet" size, and find that particularly for its diE it's surprisingly comfortable to use due to innovative form factor design choices. Other than that, a solid review :)Socius - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
How does it feel to be the idiot who benchmarked this phone on the "balanced" performance profile? Lol. Change CPU to performance mode in settings for serious gaming or benchmarking and you'll see those results jump significantly.Also regarding your comment about cheating...you're being disingenuous. Cheaters clock the chips higher than stock, and temporarily increase thermal limits in order to get performance that wouldn't ordinarily happen. The "cheating" by switching to 2.5GHz is actually a feature in the phone for "per application performance profile." The phone comes with "balanced" mode preselected. But runs An tutu in performance mode, which is a fully selectable and sustainable mode as even your benchmarks showed little to no throttling happening.
Poor review, IMO.
HubbaMaBubba - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Holy shit, I didn't notice that. For everyday usage balanced is the best though, so it makes the most sense for the benchmark.Socius - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Actually for daily use I stick to power saver. Other phones benchmarked don't have the CPU profiler installed at stock. So for benchmarking, performance mode should be enabled. And even if you disagree with that, even though the other phones you're comparing to are running in performance mode all the time, you can't make the claim that this phone cheats on benchmarks by running in performance mode.And for the record...in performance mode, this phone dominates all other android devices.
mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Lol, funny =) hopefully he checked also it is not running max 1036mhz. It is a known faulty setting, and easily fixed by enabling developer options and check that cpu is running at it should and not locked to max 1036mhz. I actually had that issue, and in the performance mode it was still running at 1036mhz before i checked that setting.mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Hit the submit button accidentally. I was sarcastic about did he check the mhz before testing (his phone was running correctly), but if you feel your phone is slow, check your phone isnt set to max 1036mhz.Jc.ray - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I've been using it for a month. Besides some initial bugs to make it work properly which where solved in a couple of weeks I have no other complains. You might prefer to start using two hands for typing but many of us already where doing that with tiny iphone4, as for the rest I am able to manage everything in one hand which in my case is not particularly big. As for the phablet: yes, here is the measure, as much as I love it I haven't used my ipad mini not even once since I received oneplusone, you can just do everything here so, if any, biggest danger is how you scale your internet use for any porpoise with this devicejomo60 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
"First, the size is definitely too much to handle".The opo is 152.9mm x 75.9mm, the iphone 6+ is 158mm x78mm.
Your iphone 6+ review had no problem with a phone larger than the oneplus one, and rounded corners "feature" does not make a screen more reachable.
mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
What else can you expect nowadays? Unfortunately I feel that you dont get objective reviews about apple anymore from anandtech. This is a good example.neogodless - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Re: terrible camerahttp://robinwong.blogspot.com/2014/09/oneplus-one-...
The hardware of the camera is actually pretty good. There's no getting around the lack of OIS, but otherwise it works well enough when pair with good software and capable hands.
I've had the phone for two weeks. I have little experience with Android and none with Cyanogenmod, but I was not confused about the optional... options that allow you to customize your phone, if you, you know, want to.
The battery charges quickly on my AC charger and the included USB charger, but it charges really slowly on several other micro-USB chargers that I got with Nokia and Motorola handsets over the past two years.
I did notice a little weirdness to the feel of the touch screen, but I put an amFilm screen protector on there, and have no issues now.
I use the phone about the same as I've used smaller phones, though I guess I was never much for one-handed operation. I like the stability of holding the phone and then using my other hand to do all the things.
I think the bottom line is that there's very little you give up in comparison to phones that cost $300 more. I don't think there's anything you can't live without.