OnePlus 2 - Truly a "Flagship Killer"?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,743 words · ~8 min read
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so as some many of you noticed i never covered the
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oneplus one was it because i thought their offer to lend it to me for less
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than a week while one of their employees happened to be on vacation in vancouver
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was insulting and ridiculous was it their offensive and irresponsible
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advertising campaigns was it their trying so hard to be viral invite system
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for ordering maybe a little bit of all three but
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dbrand skins a great partner of ours threw a phone in the mail to me and
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basically said you have to do the one plus two so i figured all right let's
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see what the fuss is about let's see if it lives up to the hype
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oh wait hold on on the subject of dbrand and hype they're the presenting sponsor
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for scrapyard wars 3 and the production schedule is locked in it's going to be a
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three-way between me luke and austin evans so slam that like button if you're
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amped and you think austin is going to be an awesome guest star okay now you
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can roll the intro
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Intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream with their new core i7 6700k and core i5
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6600k processors click on the link in the video description to learn more
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oneplus comes right out of the gate boldly declaring their second generation
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device to be a 2016 flagship killer and
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obviously if they're going to run around and say things like that it better have
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the horses to back it up so CPU-wise the oneplus 2 sports the controversial
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snapdragon 810 1.8 gigahertz octa-core
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processor paired with an adreno 430 GPU which should handle the phone's 1080p
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display with relative ease RAM and storage specs aren't that clear-cut with
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the 16 gig storage model being paired with three gigs of system memory and the
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64 gig version getting a one gig bump to four gigs the display is a five and a
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half inch 1080p ips lcd covered with corning gorilla glass 4 and features an
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ltps glass substrate which is more expensive than both silicon and exo and
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is accompanied on the top by a 5 megapixel selfie camera and on the
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bottom by a row of capacitive touch sensitive buttons with the center being
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used as a home button camera launch button and fingerprint sensor for quick
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authentication cool beans i love this feature as long as it works it seems
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that some units mine being among them may suffer from non-responsive home
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buttons maybe something to do with chassis grounding or something like that
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fortunately you can use on-screen buttons by flipping one switch in the
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settings menu neat physically i really have started just
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glossing over most phones these days because aren't they all just basically
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rip-offs of the original iphone actually in this case no for starters
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the notification modifier button on the left side has not 2 but three positions
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to allow audible sounds for all notifications priority notifications
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only and alarms only a nifty little inclusion the right side lock and volume
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adjust buttons are flipping awesome protruding just enough to be easily felt
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without looking at the phone and with enough resistance that i didn't
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accidentally mash them all the time while trying to hold the phone and hold
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the phone indeed is this what it looks like at the bottom yes on the bottom are
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the regrettably well bottom mounted but surprisingly loud and clear speakers and
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a reversible usb type-c port for
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charging if you want to know all about the benefits of usb type-c we've got a
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video about it which you can check out here but in a nutshell it's reversible
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along with the cable oneplus includes which is freaking awesome it's more
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durable and it can both handle more power and transfer data
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faster than previous slim standards like micro b but that's the first in a series
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of gotchas with the oneplus 2. thanks to the usb 2 backbone the type c port only
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operates at usb 2 power and speeds and for whatever reason qualcomm's quick
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charge 2.0 technology is not supported
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in this config so you'll have to wait three hours or more for a full charge
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not a big deal to me since the included 3300 milliamp hour non-removable battery
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was enough for me to get through all but the most intense days but it might be a
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factor for you gotcha number two oneplus
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may be billing this phone as a flagship killer from a performance standpoint but
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it's not like with more premium devices you aren't getting anything for your
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extra money either and the two fails to deliver really any
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cool standout features beyond its charging port no water resistance to
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speak of no sd expansion although it does have dual sim slots under the
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removable back cover which is still quite unusual in north american models
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and no nfc support to name a few this
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last one is particularly perplexing as while i've never been a regular user of
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nfc its ubiquity among Android phones has made google even go as far as to
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integrate it into their new phone migration wizard with who knows what
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else depending on the technology in the future and on the subject of the future
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and improvement oneplus really does seem to be banking on that to sell these
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phones the software is refreshingly unbloated and has some great inclusions
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like a system-wide dark theme gestures for like double tap to wake
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double home for camera and swift swiftkeys fantastic third-party keyboard
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app included but it just isn't completely polished in
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a way that's sort of hard to quantify like reconnecting to wi-fi automatically
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was really hit or miss for me auto brightness adjustments were very
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sudden and jarring which hasn't been an issue for me with other phones for a
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couple of years a voice over lte on band
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12 a must for t-mobile customers is coming according to a reddit post
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somewhere and the camera is getting more capabilities at some undisclosed time
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which i guess leads us pretty well into the main pillar of a smartphone video
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these days the camera it's pretty darn good the main camera sports optical
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image stabilization laser autofocus and a dual led flash and captures 13
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megapixel images and up to 4k 30fps
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videos it handles low light reasonably well and if we ignore the pretty rubbish
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viewfinder responsiveness and some stupidity in the app like that swiping
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in from the left can try to try to change camera mode sometimes pulls down
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the notification tray the two gets great marks here
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not because oneplus has dethroned the lg g4 samsung galaxy s6 or the iphone 6 all
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of which have excellent cameras but because the two costs half as much as
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those other flagship devices which i think leads us pretty well into the
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conclusion i still think the invite system is complete but the
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oneplus 2 is still a winner in my book i love the price and i agree with most if
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not all of the ways that oneplus has skimped on the two the build quality
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feels great with a reassuringly premium weight and with the gently curved back
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and extraordinarily slim bezels making it feel more like a phone a quarter of
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an inch smaller diagonally a 1080p display makes a ton of sense to me at
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this screen size and i will trade both wireless charging and quick charging for
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a more robust connector on a device that i plan to use over the long term
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but the lack of nfc baffles me and the inclusion of a second sim slot instead
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of expandable storage is a trade-off that in my mind doesn't work well
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especially for owners of the 16 gig model
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you know what else is likely to work well for owners of the one plus two a d
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brand skin you guys may or may not have noticed this but throughout the b-roll
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of this video you have been looking at one of their precision cut vinyl wraps
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that serve a couple of purposes number one is it protects the phone from
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incidental scratches no not the screen surface itself but all of the parts that
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you would actually want to cover with a vinyl wrap and number two is it allows
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you to personalize the phone they've actually got a wide variety of mix and
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match different combinations that you can play around with on their site
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they've got a configuration tool so you can be like yeah what would my phone
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look like with the wood grain on the front and like bright orange on the back
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and they've actually they've actually got the logo even cut
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out on the oneplus 2 which is pretty darn spiffy looking and then another
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additional white sort of leather grain vinyl wrap over top of the camera in the
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flash area really really awesome stuff
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and like i said actually earlier in this video they've been a long time supporter
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of the show and just generally good guys so check them out over at
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dbrand.com they've got all kinds of great stuff for phones tablets gaming
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consoles controllers all kinds of good stuff over there
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so that's pretty much it guys if you disliked this video hit that dislike
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button i'm not afraid of it if you liked it though do please hit the like button
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get subscribed or even consider supporting us by buying a cool t-shirt
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done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next um
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when is this coming out okay so i think in theory my desk pc build
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log should be out by the time you're watching this so hopefully we can link to that otherwise maybe we'll just put
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something else there