The OnePlus 5 POWER TRIP
The OnePlus 5 has big shoes
to fill and a lot of hype to live up to. As an affordable flagship, it
certainly does deliver, giving you the best price to performance ratio
currently available. The other extras are just icing on the cake
Less than three years ago,
OnePlus started setting up big plans for India.
At the time, they needed to
do everything on a small scale, so you actually had to be invited to buy their
first phone. Fast forward to present day and the company has a huge fan
following in India -this group is vocal, loyal, informed and passionate. We've
seen first hand how enthusiasts will readily line up hours in advance for a
chance to buy OnePlus phones and it all ties in with the company's `Never
Settle' mantra.
It's now the tur n of the
OnePlus 5. There are some things that are really great: it continues the
OnePlus tradition of offering fantastic (class-leading) performance.Build
quality, body colours, materials and attention to detail is stellar. The screen
is a pin-shar p amoled panel with deep blacks and colours that pop. Special
mention g o e s t o t h e n ew re a d i n g mode that de-saturates colour and
makes the screen mimic real paper (it has a special sensor for this, which
helps the screen dynamically change colour temperature depending on ambient
light).You can also set apps, like Kindle or a web browser, to automatically
enable reading mode. The ceramic fingerprint scanner is one of the best around
and unlocks in 300 milliseconds (quite literally, the blink of an eye).Oxygen
OS has to be one of our favourite Android builds.It's smooth, fast,
unobtrusive, close to stock, has zero bloatware and yet offers loads of
customisation. The battery life is great: about 10 hours go by with 40% battery
to spare on most days. To fully drain it within a day, the screen would have to
be on for about 6 hours. And it also has Dash Charge, the ultra fast charging
tech that's so fast, it will change your phone charging habits. And there are
some things that are not so great: there's no optical image stabilization (OIS)
for the camera, which is puzzling. The 33T has it and benefits from it greatly.
The only explanation we could think of is that this time, the company chose
form over function. The phone is super-slim at 7.25mm. Adding OIS would have
likely made the camera module thicker. You'll feel the lack of OIS most while
recording video, where phones like the Galaxy S8 and iPhone 7 Plus will shoot
video that is vastly more stable.
The design: it's very nice
but by no means next gen. It still has bezels all around with a sizeable
forehead and chin.The screen is `only' 1080p while all the other premium
flagships have pushed ahead in resolution. Finally, something we were so hoping
for -any kind of ingress protection. This phone is not water or dust resistant
so you will have to use with caution. This omission is probably a cost saving
measure.
The device is getting a ton
of hate for the camera but we think the hate is not completely justified. To
put it down a little clearly, it's definitely better than the 3T. If you're
using the primary camera, the focus speed is really fast. It gives you great
results, even in low light. The Pro mode is great, even comes with a live
histogram and level. The portrait mode is a little hit or miss -it needs a lot
of light and the edges are sometimes not very well defined, but it is improving
with updates. Actually, the camera has been noticeably improving with every
update (there have been four updates since we've been using it). And given that
it's being compared, across the board, with phones like the Galaxy S8, iPhone 7
Plus, HTC U11 and Google Pixel should give you some idea of where it's hitting.
In it's cur rent state of tune, the over all camera quality is still not as
good as these four top-spec devices. But its in the vicinity, which is a pretty
big deal for a de vice at this price! Compared to the out going OnePlus 33T,
it's more refined, slimmer, has an upgraded dual camera and contin ues the
company's tradition of offering f a n t a s t i c p e r f o r mance, &
high-end specs at a reasona ble price. But if you just bought a 3T, there
should no rush to upg rade.
What about upgrad ing from
other `20 or 30k phones? If you want the best perfor ming Android phone with
stock Android, a great amoled screen and loads of useful features at a
reasonable price, the OnePlus 5 is hard to beat.
|
Hitesh
Bhagat
|
ET28JUN17
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