China’s OnePlus continues to produce flagship phones at comparatively low prices, with its most recent offering – the OnePlus 3 – featuring a 5.5″ AMOLED display.
Called ‘a big step up’ from the OnePlus 2, the handset uses an all-metal design with a slight curve on the back. The display is 1920 x 1080, with very narrow side bezels; the overall body is around 2.1mm wider than the Galaxy S7 Edge. As with other OnePlus phones, there is a physical switch to enable or disable notifications, or switch them to priority-only mode.
Internally, the specifications are impressive – especially for a handset at this price. A quad-core Snapdragon 820 SoC is supported by 6GB of RAM (even Samsung’s Galaxy S7 only has 4GB), with 64GB of storage, and runs Android 6.0.1.
OnePlus has licensed Oppo’s fast charging (Dash Charge) technology, which operates through the power adaptor rather than the phone. This means that the adaptor, not the handset, gets hot. It does require a compatible adaptor, though.
A USB-C port and dual SIM slots are featured. Both SIM cards can be supported in standby at the same time. The phone, as mentioned above, runs Android with OnePlus’s Oxygen OS skin. However, an open bootloader means that users can swap to another version if they prefer. A fingerprint scanner is built in to the home button.
A 16MP camera is built in to the rear of the phone, and an 8MP camera on the front. The camera app can support RAW footage capture, UltraHD at 30fps or slow motion 1280 x 720 video at 120fps.
OnePlus is selling its new smartphone now – openly, for once, rather than on an invitation-only system – for $415.
