OnePlus 2 Review – Almost the phone of the year

I have seen fans getting excited about Apple devices, but it is rare to see that passion when it comes to Android devices. After Xiaomi, OnePlus has managed to garner such love from the fans. I own the OnePlus One and it has been my primary mobile for over a year now. So when I got an invite to buy the OnePlus 2, I wanted to pass it on and I announced it on my twitter timelines. The pileup which happened after that tweet, made me realize the extent of the craze for OnePlus among the fans. Is this craze justified? Does the OnePlus Two deserve the love from the fans? Does it live up to its #hype. Lets dive in and check it out.

Design and Hardware

I am used to holding the OnePlus One and the moment I unpacked the OnePlus 2, the first thing that stuck me was its premium build. It has the same sandstone black finish at the back, but it feels much more solid. It has metal rims running along the sides and the buttons are made of metal. The volume and power buttons is at the left while we have an alert slider at the right. The alert slider lets you choose between 3 different sound profiles. I wish it was configurable to select any other sound profile like vibration mode. The back is removable, “easily”. But the back cover feels flimsy when removed. Once it is fit, the device feels solid. Overall, a solid construction and a premium grade mobile.

It lacks a bit of the style quotient. It looks like just another mobile at first glance. Wish the metal rim was not carbonized. The bottom has dual speaker grills, but just mono speakers. The speakers are loud and definitely refined compared to OnePlus One. But the design and placement can get it muffled easily while playing games or watching a movie clip. The display is a 5.5 inch full HD display. The quality of the display is amazing. It is protected by corning gorilla glass. It has excellent viewing angles and great sunlight legibility.  The screen has oleophobic coating for a smuge free experience and it works. The display is crisp and am not complaining about the absence of QHD or any crazy resolution here. On the top of the display is the 5 MP front facing camera, notifications LED, earpiece and the ambient and proximity sensors. At the bottom is the fingerprint sensor. Its not a button, but a track area to scan your fingerprint. It works pretty fast and if at all it fails, you can unlock the screen by an alternate security method. The back also sports the all new 13 MP camera with laser autofocus sensor and dual LED flash.

Under the hood, the mobile has a beast of a spec sheet. It is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 with quad-core 1.56 GHz Cortex-A53 and quad-core 1.82 GHz Cortex-A57 CPU. The graphics is supported by Adreno 430 GPU and the 64 GB variant has 4 GB RAM. It supports dual SIM. Both the SIM are nano SIM and both the slots support 4G SIM cards. This is definitely a spec sheet of a flagship mobile.

The OnePlus 2, looks like a flagship and act like a flagship, no doubt on that.

Performance and Heating issues

With such an impeccable hardware, very little can go wrong. The OnePlus 2 is an all round performer. It tops almost all benchmark scores and it handles games and resource heavy applications with ease. The UI is also handled smoothly. The micro interaction animations are smooth and there is no lag in UI. But I did face some occasional screen freezes and app crashes, which is due to the software and not the hardware. I will come back to it later. Now to answer the big question looming over your head. Does the OnePlus Two heat up? Well, it gets warm over intense usage but it doesn’t get over heated. Also a device with such a spec is bound to get heated up. It has a spec that will challenge most desktops or laptops. But those systems have cooling mechanism, while a mobile doesn’t. So it does heat up and it is completely normal.  The maximum temperature recorded was 43 degree and that was after an hour of gaming.

Overheating is an issue you must be concerned about but the OnePlus 2 does not over heat.

Benchmark scores

• Antutu – 52658
• Quadrant – 32932
• Vellamo Metal – 2296
• Vellamo MultiCore – 2588
• Geekbench Single core – 978
• Geekbench Multi core – 3937

Camera UI and Image Quality

The Oneplus w has got 13 MP camera at the rear. This may not sound like a lot on the mega pixel count. But each pixel is 1.3 micro meter in size, which is very bigh. Also the lens has a max aperture of F/2.0. So it allows a lot of lights. A bigger sensor and a bigger aperture give the camera a lot of light to work with. It has laser assisted focus system for fast and accurate focusing. But the laser sensor on the OnePlus 2, was not as fast as it supposed to be. It was shunting and trying to lock focus at most lighting conditions. Also there is focus shunting while recording videos. The camera is also capable of recording 4K UHD videos. It also has optical image stabilization which is needed for shooting steady footage and still shots at low light conditions. The front facing camera is just 5 MP. It produces decent shots, nothing out of the world to surprise us.

The camera UI is a huge let down. It has bare minimal features and it does not have an integrated gallery app. Infact, the mobile does not come with a native gallery app. The camera UI scores badly on user experience. It has a few modes, but switching between modes is a pain. The settings and configurations available are minimal. There is no pro mode. You cannot set the time interval in time lapse video. You cannot set speed in slow motion videos. The panorama is only 180 degrees. I can’t imagine that OnePlus has decided to ship this mobile with such limitations and yet call it a flagship killer of 2016.

But with all the limitations, the image quality is out of the world. The dynamic range, brightness and contrast levels are all great. The camera takes amazing shots with smooth depth of focus. Check out the camera samples.

Android Lollipop and Oxygen OS

The OnePlus One shipped with CyanogenOS and that is one big reason for its success. After parting ways with Cyanogen, OnePlus developed its in-house version of the OS and called it the Oxygen OS. The Oxygen OS is near stock and has zero UI skinning which is a good thing. It is very close to stock android experience, but it has a few bugs like the touch screen issues with keyboard, occasional freezing of the notifications shade, etc. Also it has a few features that is very specific to the hardware of the OnePlus 2. There are no options to customize the UI. In total, it is a nascent OS that has a long way to go. OnePlus must either upgrade the OS with more features and fix bugs soon, or get a 3rd party ROM to support the OnePlus 2 hardware.

USB-C port and Battery

The USB-C port offers the flexibility to insert the port in the socket on either direction. But there ends it advantage. It is not widely available and you are completely dependant on the cable that comes with the box. It supports USB OTG, but you will need an adapter (not easily available) to plug in any USB device. Also the battery is 3300 mAh Lithium Polymer battery. It lacks fast charging and wireless charging capability. It takes painfully long (2.30 hours) to charge from 0 to 100%. The battery life is also not very strong. On a moderate usage, it lasts for 15-17 hours, while intense usage drains the battery in less than 10 hours. So if your battery is drained, you are stranded, unless you have the USB C able with you at all times.

Availability and Pricing

The 64 GB variant is available in India for Rs 24999. The most annoying part of any prospective buyer is the invite system. OnePlus promised a better invite system, but in reality, it is still difficult to get an invite. Once you get an invite, you must claim it on your OnePlus account and then use it in Amazon India to buy. The accessories are available to buy from Amazon. There are 4 styleSwap covers available for OnePlus 2. Flipcases, back covers, screen guards are all available officially through Amazon.

The verdict

Yes, the OnePlus 2 gets on to the official GadgetDetail Recommendation list. It has a great camera but a weak camera UI. It is a powerful mobile with a fantastic hardware to buy. OnePlus must quickly resolve all the software issues. It is definitely a killer device, but the OnePlus barely manages to scratch the title to be called a flgaship killer of 2016. One year ago, the OnePlus One had no competition. But this time around, there are lot of choices in the price range of Rs 25k. If OnePlus does not act fast, it will loose the race. I am sure that OnePlus will fix the software issues, and that is the only reason I am recommending the OnePlus 2.

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