OnePlus is back with a third phone that just might be the charm and you no longer need an invite to buy it – say hello to the OnePlus 3.

DESIGN

Longtime fans and followers of OnePlus will notice that the OnePlus 3 has a pretty radically changed design. There is no longer a removable backing and the backing is no longer of sandstone black material, we now have a complete uni-body anodized aluminum design that is a little bit larger, due to the 5.5 inch screen, but it’s also incredibly thin.

This is definitely a sleek and slender device with all of the different bits and pieces exactly where you would expect them to be. It’s also quite minimalist with only the OnePlus logo on the back, right underneath the camera optic package, and on the top left there is still the alert slider returning from the OnePlus 2 and the OnePlus X.

Handling is not too difficult. Even in one-handed usage it’s not too hard to get from one side to the other but getting to the top with this 5.5 inch screen is a little bit tougher so you’re probably going to be using two hands more often than not.

However the main gripe is that the metal is quite slippery – it’s a very smooth type of metal and though it does give it a very sleek look, it might also slip right out of your hands and that is the reason why OnePlus probably sent us five different cases, showing all the different materials  that you can snap onto the back of the device.

OnePlus 3 Front View

OnePlus 3 Front View

Sandstone black is still a material that a lot of other companies are using and now on the OnePlus 3 we simply don’t have that anymore. What you have is a metal phone much like plenty of other phones in the market today and if you really want to have that better grip on the phone because this metal is quite slippery, you’re gonna have to use those covers and that’s a little bit of a nuisance no matter which way you put it.

Though we might be a little bit sad that OnePlus has stepped backwards in their design departments we do think that OnePlus has created what can be considered a very nice-looking the metal phone.

DISPLAY

Given that this device is supposed to be somewhat affordable it’s no surprise that 1080p resolution comes in this 5.5 inch amoled screen. That said however it would have been nice to see QuadHD in a phone that is supposed to be a flagship killer for 2016.

But 1080p is still nice and still provides just enough sharpness for what it’s supposed to do. It’s still fun to use for everything from gaming to media consumption – that said the amoled screen does provided a couple of extra features including the ambient display. It does have a very similar ambient display to devices like the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 6P, only you can actually wave your hand near the front of the device and it will trigger it as well. There’s also the night mode which is nice to have especially if you are a night owl who is always looking at the phone. Turning on the night mode will bump up the warmth of the color temperature way high so that it’s easier on the eyes especially when you’re in dark conditions.

Overall the screen on the OnePlus 3 is standard for the most part but it is a standard that OnePlus absolutely nails.

PERFORMANCE

And the same can be said for performance where OnePlus has actually provided a little bit more than what we’re used in flagships today. The snapdragon 820 provides great performance. We’ve had pretty much no slow down or stutter in any application or any part of the interface and oxygen OS – and that could also be attributed to oxygen OS’s more minimalist design – that said however, performance is still top notch especially when gaming. We’ve had a lot of fun with SkyForce Reloaded and have been able to have a lot of apps in the background even when playing these games and the reason for that is because OnePlus put in 6GB of RAM.

When we are using this phone we actually don’t notice any of the applications just not responding or even quitting because it runs out of the ability to keep those in the memory, so it’s a nice little step forward for OnePlus and definitely something that they will be able to boast in the OnePlus 3 moving forward.

HARDWARE

We’ll start off talking about the hardware by saying: Yes, there is in fact NFC in this device. Where the OnePlus 2 had a bit of a misstep and a lot of people pointed out, the OnePlus 3 clearly has NFC available so you will be able to do AndroidPay and also do connections through NFC.

Call quality was quite good with no complaints on either end of the calls and there were no dropped calls either when using this particular phone on the t-mobile network and speaking of sound, the speaker on the bottom right next to the USB Type-c port is adequately loud, it doesn’t have that much body to it but it’s something that you would expect from a bottom mounted single speaker. Speaking of audio, the headphone jack actually drives headphones pretty well. It’s a little bit louder than a couple of other ones out there and definitely not quite as loud as the HTC 10 but it’s still a very enjoyable experience.

OnePlus 3 minimalist back.

OnePlus 3 minimalist back.

Straight out of the box the fingerprint reader performs very well. Once you get your fingerprint red and scanned into the phone it’s just a matter of putting a finger down on that particular area and in under a second the phone will be woken up and unlocked, right away.

Battery life on the OnePlus 3 is fairly standard given that it is a 3000 mAh battery with a 5.5 inch display on a Snapdragon 820 but we still managed to have 3 and a half hours of screen-on time despite a somewhat heavier usage that included music playing and navigation throughout the day.

The best part about the OnePlus 3 is the return of “DASH charge” which was missing in the OnePlus 2 and this time “dash charging” is what OnePlus is boasting and it brings 60% of battery life in just half an hour’s worth of charge and that is actually quite incredible and very useful for when you are running out of juice – you just have to plug the phone in for a little bit and you’ll get the power you need to get through the rest of the day.

CAMERA

The camera of the OnePlus 3 comes with a pretty good app – pretty nice and intuitive – not too hard to use. It does come with the ability to swipe on the viewfinder to change the different modes. You also have the manual mode that allows you to change the shutter speed, the white balance and even the focus points and you also have a nice little feature that was introduced in the OnePlus 2, which is the ability to tap on to the area you want for your exposure and then move the focus point somewhere else.

Despite some steps forward in both cameras like having an 8 MP camera on the front, unfortunately, the camera quality of the OnePlus 3 is simply average at best.

The main reason here, especially for low light shots is that, at f/2 aperture it needs to have a longer shutter speed. Overall the quality of these photos also tends to be lacking especially when it comes to colors and most shots. There are a few shots where the clothes actually look quite good but other ones where the colors have that lack of saturation to really take the vibrancy of the scene. This also happens in video. Though videos do tend to look pretty smooth, you do see the noise in them as well, despite the videos being in 4K resolution.

It’s a bit of a disappointment that the camera is again the main place that OnePlus find themselves stumbling in their flagship killer.

SOFTWARE

Oxygen OS has been updated to Android Marshmallow and just like in the OnePlus 2 it doesn’t have too many extras when compared to let’s say “stock Android”, as a matter of fact it actually looks a lot like stock Android but in this version of Android I actually think that some of the features OnePlus does bake in are finally really ironed out – they do provide some nice functionality and they could be features that could make stock Android a little bit better.

The Shelf returns and is a place for you to put all of your different widgets. Now, the widgets can be scrollable and that is really nice to have but this little touch that’s added in, is the “memo” – a quick way of just jotting down a quick note and it’s actually kind of nice to have for those times when you do need to have some information “at the ready” on the Shelf.

A feature that stock Android has been unable to consistently have is the dark mode and I think the dark mode is still a great feature of oxygen OS because it provides that just little bit of customization especially since you can pick an accent color so you can really make the phone look kind of what you wanted to look like.

The buttons on the bottom are now dots rather than lines but it still serves the same purpose. They don’t have to adhere to what they look like and they are fully customizable. You can swap what the buttons do or you can make new functions happen if you were to double tap or hold on to any of the three buttons on the bottom. It’s a little bit of customization that gives just that little bit of character to oxygen OS and for the end user it’s nice to have that little bit of control.

OnePlus 3 side view buttons.

OnePlus 3 side view buttons.

The OnePlus 3 is available now for $390, actually a great price when you consider you don’t need an invite to buy this phone anymore. Overall the OnePlus 3 does a great job of hitting all the right notes especially for that price. But the phrase we have to look at now is not necessary “flagship killer” but “never settle”. Did OnePlus maybe step back a little bit by creating a phone that, for all intents and purposes, is a lot like everyone else. Well, for typical users, this phone is still going to be a wonderful choice but for die hard OnePlus users maybe there’s just that little bit less to be excited about this year.

OnePlus 3 Review and Specs
In conclusion it's a great device and it actually does a lot of the things we would want out of a flagship killer including not needing to be bought with an invite but there are a couple of things that OnePlus had to do in order to make this happen and that's what we kind of focused on in this review.
Design
Screen
Performance
Camera
Storage
Battery
4.0Overall Score
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