Sunday 17 July 2016

My experience with the OnePlus 3 (OP3 fans may want to ignore this...)



So I got my OP3 around a week ago now and at first, I loved it. It was by far the fastest Android phone I had used (even compared to the 6P)
However, fast does not always mean smooth. Sure, it opened apps fast, but the animations in the UI were very stuttery and janky and were horrible to watch a lot of the time. So I took to XDA with my issue and was told that a factory reset would 100% fix this, so I reset the phone... and for probably 24 hours, the phone was smooth again - hoorah! And then the stuttering slowly crept back in, the keyboard (google keyboard) was slow and froze a few times. My overall impression of the performace of the phone would be that it is fast, but compared to the smoothness of the Nexus 6P, it is below par.
The build quality is pretty good, my only issue being a very wobbly and loose volume button, but other than that, it is just as good as any iPhone or high end phone.
The screen... In short, if you are coming from a 1440p phone, you will notice the difference. Anyone that says they can't frankly needs an eye test. The colours are almost neon compared to AMOLED panels on high end Samsung's (some may like this, I didn't mind it). It gets fairly bright, not as bright as most other flagship phones though. The viewing angels are odd, tilt it one way and the display turns purple, tilt it the other way and it turns blue, slightly annoying.
The headphone jack is on par with the iPhone, which is saying a lot in my opinion. The speakers are absolute trash. Do not expect anything like the quality of the Nexus 6P or the Moto X Pure edition.
The DASH charging feature has got to be the best feature of the phone, it is as good as everyone says it is. The phone can fully charge from 0% in about 70 minutes in my testing, which is far, far faster than the Nexus 6P or any other phone I own.
The battery life is also very good, it outlasts the 6P in my experience and the standby time is also better too (dropping around 0.75% an hour compared to 1-2% an hour drain on the 6P).
The fingerprint scanner is blazingly fast, when it wants to work. I'd say 75% of the time it worked, the rest of the time it did not. I'm sure some smart guy will say that it is centrally positioned and you need to press the centre. I am aware of this and it made no difference, even after adding the same finger 5 times.
The camera is... so-so. It takes acceptable pictures is absolute perfect lighting conditions, but anything less than that and the pictures will look grainy and fuzzy. In low light, you may as well be using an iPhone 3G (I really mean that). Camera fanatics will want to avoid this phone like the plague
The real downfall of this phone for me and the reason I have no other option but to return it, is that the WiFi and cellular reception (at least for me) is worse than any device I have ever used. My iPhone 5s gets 4G pretty much everywhere at maximum speeds, whereas the OP3 managed to get 4G probably 5% of the time and at much lower speeds. The WiFi is terrible, getting around 1-2 MB/S download speed compared to 10-15mb/s on my iPhone 5s. (my internet is usually slow anyway, but the OP3 took it to a new level) This resulted in the almost 3 year old iPhone loading any form of webpage, video or audio significantly faster than the OP3.

To conclude, if you are seriously considering the OnePlus 3, lower your overall expectations. Remember that it is a cheap phone, and it is cheap for a reason. OnePlus had to cut corners somewhere and the WiFi and cellular reception, sadly is where they took a hit. The only advice I can give is that you do have a 15 day return period, so by all means try the phone and if you have a similar experience as me, you can ditch it.
I know a lot of you will hate on this post as you love the OP3 and can't bear the thought of someone saying anything bad about it. I'm not saying it is a bad phone, I think that overall, it's good, but it is not flawless by any means.
I hope this helps at least someone! I will answer any questions if I can.



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