New Delhi: Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus is back with a bang. This time, it is the latest 'flagship killer' smartphone, the OnePlus 3. The smartphone, unveiled at a VR launch event, is available at a price of Rs. 27,999. This year, the company has finally closed its invite system, and the smartphone can be purchased from Amazon without any invites at all.
Design and display
The OnePlus 3 is an all-metal smartphone, unlike its previous versions that were thick and had plastic backs. The smartphone feels slim and refined. It's a little slippery to hold but OnePlus has a whole bunch of covers to solve the problem.
The right edge has a power button with a dualSIM (nanoSIM) card slot and the left edge has a volume rocker and a very useful Alert Slider much like an iPhone. The bottom edge has a single speaker, a USB Type-C port for charging and data syncing alongside a 3.5mm audio jack.
The front is being protected by a 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4, with a physical home button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner.
The OnePlus 3 comes with a 5.5-inch fullHD AMOLED display with a 1920x1080 pixels resolution. A QuadHD resolution screen is a step forward as both the OnePlus One and OnePlus 2 came with fullHD. OnePlus claims that the display is able to produce "colours that are more vivid and true-to-life than other AMOLED displays while offering excellent battery life". And the device actually has a great display.
Performance
The OnePlus 3 runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, which is based on OxygenOS version 3.1.2. The OxygenOS works similar as stock Android with no extra apps and heavy filters.
The OnePlus 3 smartphone is powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor coupled with Adreno 530 GPU. It has a huge 6GB of RAM, which allows the phone to run smoothly even during continuous shuffling and amid a whole ton of heavy apps.
It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor that has a tendency to get warm, occasionally, but it cools down quickly, which is a plus point.
Camera
The reason why the previous smartphones OnePlus 2 and the OnePlus X failed was because of their cameras. This time around, the OnePlus 3 has a much better camera and comes with a 16-megapixel camera, which has a Sony IMX 298 sensor, PDAF, f/2.0 aperture and Optical Image Stabilisation. The rear snapper is capable of recording time-lapse, 4K video and RAW file format. It has a quick focus and the shutter speed is also quite good.
It also has an 8-megapixel camera on the front that captures good selfies, with good detail in good lighting but the low-light selfies have a lot of noise.
Battery life
The smartphone is backed by a 3,000mAh battery, with a decent battery life of 1 day. But when rigorously used, the battery will have to be charged twice a day. OnePlus also has an in-house fast charging technology called Dash Charging. The company claims that the Dash Charger technology is capable of charging the phone to up to 60 per cent in just 30 minutes and yes, it does.
Verdict
The OnePlus 3 with 6GB RAM and 64GB memory variant has been priced at Rs 27,999 in India. The OnePlus 3 is one of the best smartphones in the under Rs 30,000 smartphone category. For alternatives, you can take a look at the Xiaomi Mi 5 and the LeEco Le Max 2.
