OnePlus 3 - They Finally Did It!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,729 words · ~8 min read
0:00
watching OnePlus mature as a company has been kind of like watching a kid grow up
0:05
in high school he was the kid who got caught picking his nose and eating it
0:08
but like he had this sick home theater set up for his Xbox so we all pretended
0:12
it never happened in college he blossomed into this wicked athlete who
0:17
ended up getting cut from the team for blazing up behind the Portables and now
0:22
he's back to show me what he can do now that he's all growed up this is the
0:28
OnePlus 3
0:38
cooler Masters masterc case maker 5 features their free form modular system
0:42
allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours through the link
0:46
down below so why couldn't OnePlus
0:50
repeat what they did with the OnePlus One their first Flagship class phone at
0:55
an impossibly low price of
0:58
$299 well because it's easier to do that
1:01
when you piggyback off of your parent company as an experimental startup
1:06
project with no expectations of profitability you can't actually do the
1:11
marketing customer service and both software and Hardware R&D necessary to
1:16
compete as a global brand on margins that fin so some compromises got made on
1:22
the OnePlus 2 including its lack of NFC
1:25
and its pricing was still higher even for the base 16 gig model at
1:32
$329 but are users really that sensitive
1:35
to a few bucks what if we didn't have to make any compromises and the device
1:40
could still be a couple hundred cheaper than its Flagship competitors well that
1:45
seems to be the formula this time and I think it worked let's have a look at
1:50
this puppy the OnePlus 3 is thinner than
1:53
the Samsung Galaxy S7 at 7.35 mm though
1:57
it's hard to say just how much of how
2:00
great it feels in the hand is due to this and how much is due to the
2:04
excellent weight distribution and very similar overall weight in spite of the
2:10
significantly larger screen 5.5 in it's
2:15
still too big for my hands but the aluminum alloy construction is very
2:19
confidence inspiring and I can say confidently that it's the most
2:23
comfortable 5 1/2 in that I have ever
2:26
held thanks to the rounded rear edges reasonable size chin bar and super slim
2:31
bezels around its 1080p display which
2:35
okay so there's one compromise OnePlus has opted for a 1080 screen again but I
2:41
didn't disagree with their choice last time and I don't disagree with it this
2:45
time and there are some upgrades to it too the three gets this wonderfully high
2:50
contrast non-reflective and miraculously
2:54
not oversaturated AMOLED panel with white Point adjustments built right into
2:59
the operating system system so you can tune it according to your preferences
3:02
direct sunlight performance is not quite there with the Galaxy S7 and 1080p is
3:08
not ideal for VR so residents of the planet Mercury who are really into
3:12
Google cardboard need not apply but it is a great display above it next to the8
3:19
color notification LED is an 8 megapixel 1080p video selfie camera that falls
3:24
comfortably into good enough for front facing if you need better turn your damn
3:29
phone around territory and then below the screen is one of my favorite things
3:33
about the op3 Samsung's marriage to ripping off the iPhone's physical home
3:38
button is becoming more and more out of place and the OnePlus 3 is in my mind
3:43
the golden standard for how to handle Android buttons you can choose to use
3:48
the capacitive hardware buttons with a very fast fingerprint sensor embedded in
3:53
the middle one or you can choose to disable them outright and opt for
3:56
onscreen buttons and in either configuration you can set back and
4:01
recent apps to whichever side you prefer and oxygen OS as clean and stock Android
4:07
like as it is includes a number of these small but actually meaningful
4:13
customizations some like the invert color mode or the night mode I didn't
4:17
really care for but others drawing on screen long press and double press
4:23
gestures for launching apps and their easy memo taking in shelf when you swipe
4:27
to the left of the home screen sucked me right right in on the left of the device
4:31
you'll find a button I didn't really use much that lets you allow all some or no
4:36
notifications through a one button theater mode if you will and one of one
4:41
Plus's few missteps the volume rocker
4:44
which is directly opposing the lock button making it hard to especially
4:48
adjust volume up without mashing the lock over on the right side that sits
4:53
below the Sim and only Sim no micro SD
4:57
expansion that's the last real flaw I'm going to point out
5:00
tray on the bottom the good stuff continues the built-in speaker is
5:04
downward facing but it is surprisingly
5:08
loud with only a little bit of distortion creeping in at the top two
5:12
volume settings and this is really smart if they did it on purpose the grill is
5:17
on the opposite side compared to the iPhone 6s and the Galaxy S7 which means
5:21
that while you do have to do the Palm cupping thing it works way better than
5:27
usual because it fires right into the rounded part of your palm cool between
5:32
the grill and the headphone jack which by the way I prefer on top so I don't
5:36
Mash capacitive buttons trying to take my phone out of my pocket in case anyone
5:39
from OnePlus is actually watching this is a USB type c port with support for
5:44
another solid feature up to 4 amp charging at 5 volts that allows the
5:49
3,000 mAh battery to reach 60% in about
5:53
half an hour and this they claim is
5:56
without generating as much heat in the phone itself as other quick charging
6:00
solutions for Less thermal throttling while gaming on wall power for example
6:05
here's a thermal camera shot versus the HTC1 which uses Qualcomm quick charge
6:09
3.0 for comparison but without the right horses you wouldn't be gaming much
6:13
anyway and I haven't been avoiding that on purpose the three packs of Snapdragon
6:18
820 6 gigs of lpddr4 RAM 64 gigs in the
6:23
base configuration of ufs 2.0 storage
6:27
which makes the lack of micr SD quite a bit more forgivable IMO dual Sims NFC
6:33
Gorilla Glass 4 great call Quality and a
6:36
16 megapixel front camera so on par with
6:39
pretty much anything else out there in theory all at its 3.99 price point
6:46
however we know cameras are a critical feature and we know that megapixels do
6:51
not a camera make but there's more good
6:54
news the camera on the OnePlus 3 kicks ass it launches lightning fast it
6:59
focuses very quickly it shoots 4K video and Raw photos it features ample manual
7:05
controls in its Stock app and its image quality is competitive enough with
7:09
Flagship phones like the Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 6s that when Brandon took his
7:14
test shots around to folks here at the office even if they could pick out a
7:18
winner and it wasn't the OnePlus 3 it took a while and they had to look at it
7:23
pretty closely and remember that these are much more expensive devices compared
7:29
to my pre-production axon 7 a more comparably priced device there is no
7:34
contest whatsoever I am a little salty
7:37
that it can't snap a photo or start shooting video from the same initial
7:41
screen instead requiring a swipe but hopefully OnePlus are you listening that
7:46
can be fixed in software and then I wouldn't feel like I was missing out on
7:50
really any part of the s7's camera experience by switching I don't actually
7:55
know what's more remarkable here the way
7:58
OnePlus has grown so much in such a short span from a weird offshoot from a
8:04
Chinese brand to a Bonafide sustainable
8:08
competitor in the high-end smartphone market did I mention by the way the
8:11
deplorable invite system is gone or the
8:14
way that through all of it they have proven to be the only high-tech company
8:18
in the mobile space or otherwise who actually knows how to count so I'll just
8:23
congratulate them on both and say good work on the OnePlus 3 keep it up
8:30
you know who else did a good job dbrand
8:33
cuz dbrand made a skin for the OnePlus 3
8:36
already and you can head over to dbrand.com we've got a link in the video
8:39
description and check out the wide variety of skins they have not just for
8:44
the OnePlus 3 but also for a huge variety of other devices including
8:47
phones game consoles game controllers and even laptop computers the best part
8:53
about dbrand site has got to be their configurator which lets you take all the
8:58
different skins wood grain carbon fiber solid color and preview what they look
9:04
like as a Precision fitted skin on your
9:07
device including combining different colors with other colors like I did in
9:11
my iPhone SE review to a great effect
9:15
that is one eye-catching phone so check
9:18
it out at the link in the video description that's dbrand skins makers
9:21
of the highquality vinyl skins that you'll see on pretty much every phone
9:26
that we review over here thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you
9:30
know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed wait U wherever that is
9:35
hit that like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon
9:39
instructions up there buying a cool shirt like this one at the link in the video description or by joining our
9:44
community Forum where you can ask your Tech questions answer other people's
9:47
Tech questions and basically just get in on the conversation now that you're done
9:51
doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right
9:55
corner to check out our latest video over on Channel Super Fun