[ONE General] apatal:
I got my OPO yesterday and had a chance to tinker with it last night...

I got my One via an online store here, for a US$ 50 premium, which I felt was a good deal since buying imported stuffs here in our country usually comes with a shipping fee of around that value. I later learned they are getting their One's from Hong Kong, and I immediately suspected that it won't be shipping with CM11s out of the box and I was correct.

Anyway, we're in xda so that wasn't such a big deal for us folks here, so I downloaded the factory image for CM11s, and now I'm running it stock rooted, and with TWRP as well, just in case something catches my fancy in the Development Forum. So here are some of my first impressions:

SCREEN: I think I’m one of the lucky ones with the piss colored screen (no yellow band at the bottom as far as I can tell). Not really a big deal for me, as I think this is just screen color calibration and future software updates can fix this. I hope. Other than that, the screen is gorgeous. Of course, this is my first 1080p-screen phone so expect me to be impressed, but man, watching videos here are just. So. Much. Better.

SIZE: Man, coming from the Nexus 4, this thing is HUGE. I mean I find myself doing hand gymnastics and my hands aren’t small. I mean I loved typing on my Nexus 4 since the size is just right for me to reach everything, and make it easy for me to type, (typing on my wife’s iPhone is hell for me. HELL) but this is definitely a 2-handed device. No doubt about it.

BUILD QUALITY: No one and I mean no one will believe it if I let them hold this and tell them it costs me all of US$ 400 only. It’s that good. My only gripe? As much as I like the way the screen sticks out a bit from the chrome bezel (which by the way, reminds me a lot of my Nexus 4, adding to the premium feel), I find it a lint magnet, especially once I walk around with it on my pocket. Then again, all phones do that but my mild OCD just nags at me when I see those white stuffs in the spaces between parts of my phone.

SOUND: Haven’t had a chance to listen with a headset yet. As for the speaker, it’s loud enough – certainly louder than my Nexus 4. Zero to negligible bass but I can live with that. I usually just watch YouTube videos anyway. If I watch movies or TV series in it, I usually use headset. I’ll give my impressions once I get to that.

SOFTWARE & PERFORMANCE: It definitely lives up to its specs: fast, fluid and powerful. CM11s I find a good enough ROM. I know that there are a couple of other ROMs in the Dev section now but I want to stick with this for now and see how CM Inc. is planning to improve this. This is their baby as much as it is OnePlus's and I feel like their reputation as a company will depend on how good they can keep this device running. And I sort of trust them; almost all custom ROMs use a piece of their code in one way or another anyway.

BATTERY LIFE: This I need to mention in my next post once I go through the whole cycle. My goal is to not worry too much about battery and just use this the same way I’ve been using my Nexus 4, which normally gives me 3 to 3.5 hours SOT, depending on how much I have running on the background. Also installed Greenify (something I’ve always had on my Nexus 4). We’ll see.

SO FAR I’m loving it. Let’s see if my opinion is going to change once I get a chance to play with it some more. For those reading this and wondering if it’s a good buy, my answer is YES. If you can get it for US$350, it’s a steal, just for the specs alone. If you have been a modder ever since, you’ll feel right at home here and if you do not like CM11s (or ColorOS, like for my case) you can always go and slap a different ROM in there. Try to ignore the noise, sometimes it’s better to look at a device first without bias and preconceived shortcomings and just judge the device objectively by its merits.

Hope this helps! Cheers!