OnePlus 6
review: The matter is settled PART I
A phone that
delivers in almost every way.
With OnePlus releasing a new phone every six months, it's safe
to say that the OnePlus 6T, likely coming in November, will offer a few select
upgrades to the company's tried-and-true formula — along with a modest price
bump.
But if you're in the market for a phone right now, and don't
want to spend more than you need to on a well-rounded Android experience —
heck, smartphone experience in general — the OnePlus 6 is your absolute best
option.
Whereas previous models had notable drawbacks,
particularly around camera quality, OnePlus has seized on a confluence of
factors to release a phone that has no
I (Daniel Bader) am reviewing the OnePlus 6 after spending just
over a week with the phone running on the Freedom Mobile LTE network in
Toronto, Canada.
The phone shipped with build 512 but was updated to
513 shortly before the phone was announced on May 16. The model tested was the
Mirror Black variant with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
THE NITTY GRITTY
Let's talk
hardware
The OnePlus 6, despite sharing nearly identical
dimensions with its all-metal predecessor, has gained a bit of thickness and a
sizeable amount of weight, and that's owing to its Gorilla Glass 5 housing, a
first for the OnePlus series. It looks better than any OnePlus phone to date,
for sure, but it also looks quite a lot like quite a few other phones on the
market right now, including the LG G7, Huawei P20
Pro and, increasingly, others.
Such is the price of maturity, and the OnePlus 6 wears
it well. Yes, there's a notch on the 6.28-inch Optic AMOLED display, but the
phone is no larger than the OnePlus 5T — OnePlus merely expanded the usable
real estate. And while there are some software quirks associated with the
notch, particularly in the now-truncated status bar, for the most part, it's
not distracting, and the whole thing just works. The screen is good — bright
and vibrant, with plenty of calibration options — but like Huawei's flagships,
OnePlus continues to resist the urge to move to QHD.
This phone
feels expensive.
Is that a problem? Not at all. Comparing the OnePlus 6's display
to the current market leader, the Galaxy S9+, reveals no serious handicaps.
Reds aren't quite as punchy, and the phone doesn't reach the same levels of brightness
as Samsung's latest flagship, but in all but the brightest conditions, it won't
matter. If you can handle the notch, and I implore you to get over it, you will
love this screen.
To accommodate a diminished set of antenna lines, the
OnePlus-hardware-staple mute switch has been relocated to the right side of the
phone. Given that the right-side power and left-side volume controls are in the
same relative positions, this change isn't that important, but being
right-handed I did find it easier to use. Lefties may not feel the same way. At
the same time, the mute switch now works as it should, shuffling between
ringer, vibrate and mute without interfering with Oreo's Do Not Disturb
settings. That means if DND is enabled, the mute switch is largely useless — the
phone cedes to the software — but that will be fixed in Android P.
The phone may
look familiar, but the quality is second to none for this price.
Around back are where you'll find the biggest
aesthetic changes to the OnePlus 6: not only has the dual camera shifted
vertical, but the makeup of that second camera is a bit different, too.
Actually, that's not quite true, but the intent of the second camera has
changed, which we'll get to a bit later.
The rear fingerprint sensor, which was originally
added to the OnePlus 5T, is now oblong and ever-so-slightly lower down on the
phone, but I've come to use it less and less now that the phone's face
recognition is so reliable. Frustratingly, OnePlus 6 lacks the option for a
swipe gesture on the fingerprint sensor to bring down the notification shade,
but given that it's available on the 5T, it's only a matter of time before
OnePlus adds it.
The OnePlus 6 still has a headphone jack on the bottom, along
with a single downward-facing speaker — loud, but not beefy — and USB-C port.
And for better or worse (but mainly worse), it's got the same buzzy,
overwrought vibration motor as its predecessor. After using the phone for well
over a week, the low-quality vibration motor is my primary fault against the
phone, and makes me less likely to use it in the long-run than, say, a Galaxy
S9 or LG G7. At the same time, my colleague Alex Dobie, who has used the
OnePlus 6 for the same length of time, finds no issue with the haptics, and
even prefers them to more expensive phones, so your mileage may vary.
With the
addition of a glass back, it's almost an insult not to add wireless charging.
The lack of wireless charging galls a little, but not
too much; worse is the exclusion of the USB Power Delivery standard in favor of
OnePlus's proprietary (and admittedly faster) Dash Charge. It claims that
wireless charging is a regression over fast wired charging, but the reliance on
OnePlus's specific cables and AC adapters undermine that argument. I don't want
to have to buy a second or third Dash Charger just to reach peak speeds in my office, bedroom, and car. At nearly $30 for just the car
charger, for instance, the decision may prove
profitable for OnePlus, but it's decidedly customer-unfriendly.
As far as hardware goes, you're getting a lot for your
money, but it's clear that OnePlus is still saving strategically, and it's the
small things — screen resolution, haptics, speaker output, wireless charging —
where its more expensive competition is taking the conversation.
THE SPECIFICATIONS YOU NEED
Power. Full.
|
Screen
|
6.28-inch OLED
|
|
SoC
|
Snapdragon 845
|
|
RAM
|
6/8GB
|
|
Storage
|
64/128/256GB
|
|
Camera 1
|
16MP rear, ƒ/1.7, OIS
|
|
Camera 2
|
20MP rear, ƒ/1.7
|
|
Battery
|
3300mAh
|
|
Connectivity
|
Gigabit LTE, 27 LTE bands
|
|
Security
|
Fingerprint, face unlock
|
|
Dimensions
|
155.7 x 75.4 x 7.75 mm
|
|
Weight
|
177 grams
|
|
Colors
|
Mirror Black, Midnight Black, Silk White
|
|
Price
|
$529, $579, $679
|
As with all of OnePlus's updates, specs rule the show here. In
addition to upgrading to 2018's staple flagship platform, the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 845, OnePlus is for the first time offering a $629 256GB storage
option to go along with 8GB of RAM.
The $529 base model still comes with 6GB of RAM and
64GB of storage, which should be more than enough for most people, but without
expandable storage, many will likely choose to go with the $579 middle option,
which pairs 8GB of RAM with 128GB of storage, and also comes in two additional
colors — Midnight Black and, starting June 5, Silk White — to go along with the
standard Mirror Black.
Like I said before, aside from a few smaller
omissions, it's really difficult to fault the company for any of its
specification decisions here, especially if you're a number counter like many
OnePlus customers are. This is the first OnePlus phone to reach gigabit speeds,
thanks to Qualcomm's X16 baseband and the antenna density to support 4x4 MIMO.
Unfortunately, despite having the CDMA and LTE bands to support Verizon's
network, the phone is only certified to work on AT&T and T-Mobile in the
U.S. Oh, well.
Using the phone on Canada's Freedom Mobile network,
which is more akin to T-Mobile than AT&T, I consistently reached speeds of
50Mbps. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were solid, as was GPS. I didn't make many phone
calls, but the ones I made (over a 3G connection — Freedom doesn't support
VoLTE) were loud and clear.
On the upside, the OnePlus 6 is unlocked and has two SIM slots,
both of which can access LTE — a first for the OnePlus line.
The 3300mAh battery inside the OnePlus 6 is unchanged
in capacity from the OnePlus 5series,
and is down slightly over the OnePlus 3 series, but the
company says this one is the longest performer yet thanks to processor
efficiencies and software improvements, and I've found that claim to be true.
Indeed, the OnePlus 6 didn't quit on me before the end of the day even once during
my testing period, and there are more than enough power-saving settings to
extend the life of even the heaviest of users.
If you're after
a pure numbers game, the OnePlus 6 dominates the industry.
In particular, at night I found myself enabling OnePlus's
excellent Reading Mode instead of the blue light-killing Night Mode, largely
because the monochrome palette accomplishes the same thing and encourages me to
read the many books I have waiting for me in the Kindle app rather than spend
my evenings scrolling through Instagram. It's a win-win and, more importantly,
a beautifully-implemented feature.
Finally, despite lacking an IP rating for water
resistance, OnePlus claims that the OP6 can withstand a "standard"
amount of water exposure in daily use. Basically, don't submerge it in the pool
or expect it to survive a romp in the washing machine. But I decided to take my
chances with the phone during a recent downpour — and I'm talking a severe
thunderstorm, not a minor drizzle — by making a phone call and taking a few
photos, and it held up well. It remains to be seen if, unlike IP-certified
phones like the Galaxy S9 and Pixel 2, there will be any long-term damage from
water exposure, but right now I'm happy it's still alive.
Continues in PART II
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