[ONE General] Jedi2011:
INTRODUCTION

If you’re a mobile enthusiast, then you’ve probably heard of the Oneplus One, the 2014 flagship killer that has come out of nowhere and is offering top spec performance for half the price of the established smartphones from the likes of Samsung, LG and Sony. If you’re not a mobile enthusiast, I’ll wind this whole review up by saying the battery doesn’t last a week like your Nokia 5110 and you can move on.

Getting hold of a Oneplus One isn’t the easiest of things to do – no high street shops offering subsidised contracts, no major mobile carriers offering deals, you can’t even just buy one online. You have to be invited to buy a Oneplus One via their forum, and when you are, you have 24 hours to buy the phone. So when the opportunity came up to grab one of 30,000 invites, I jumped at the chance!

Once my invite arrived, I headed over to the online store to choose my new phone – either the 16gb model in silk white for £229, or the 64gb model in sandstone black for £269. As the Oneplus One doesn’t have a MicroSD slot, I chose the 64gb model as 16gb won’t last long. Payment was made through PayPal, and was a simple and easy process.

Three days later, Royal Mail bought me a large padded jiffy bag, and that’s when the good stuff really starts!

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

BASIC PARAMETERS

Color	Silk White/Sandstone Black

Dimensions	152.9 x 75.9 x 8.9 mm

Weight	5.71 ounces (162 g)

OS	Cyanogen 11S based on Android 4.4

CPU	Qualcomm© Snapdragon™ 801 processor with 2.5GHz Quad-core CPUs

GPU	Adreno 330, 578MHz

RAM	3 GB LP-DDR3, 1866MHz

Storage	16/64 GB eMMC 5.0, available capacity varies

Sensors	Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity and Ambient Light

Battery	Embedded rechargeable 3100 mAh LiPo battery

CONNECTIVITY

Connectivity

GSM:	850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz

WCDMA:	Bands: 1/2/4/5/8

LTE:	Bands: 1/3/4/7/17/38/40

Wi-Fi	Dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4G/5G) 802.11 b/g/n/ac

Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.0

NFC	65T (software card emulation, payment methods and multi-tag support)

Positioning	Internal GPS antenna + GLONASS

Digital Compass

PORTS, SLOTS, BUTTONS AND INDICATORS

Ports	Data & Charging: Micro USB 2.0

Audio:	Jack 3.5mm

Buttons	Power Button

Volume Rockers

Capacitive / On-screen buttons

SIM	1 slot - Micro SIM

Indicators	1 LED notification light (multicolored)

DISPLAY

Size	5.5 inch JDI

Resolution	1080p Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels), 401 PPI

Type	LTPS IPS with TOL

Protection	Corning© Gorilla© Glass 3

CAMERAS

Sensor	13 Megapixel - Sony Exmor IMX 214

Lenses	6 lenses to avoid distortion and color aberration

Flash	Dual-LED

Aperture	f/2.0

Front Camera	5 Megapixel - Distortion free

Video	4K resolution video with stereo recording Slow Motion: 720p video at 120fps

AUDIO

Speakers	Bottom Facing Dual Speakers

Microphones	Tri-microphone with noise cancellation

MULTIMEDIA

Audio supported formats

Playback:	MP3, AAC, AMR, OGG, M4A, MID, WMA, FLAC, APE, AAC, WAV

Recording:	AAC, M4A

Video supported formats

Playback:	MP4, H.263, H.264, RMVB, FLV720P

Recording:	MP4

Image supported formats

Playback:	JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP

Output:	JPEG, RAW

UP CLOSE

Inside the well padded jiffy bag I found two boxes and a small plastic bag. The bag contained a UK mains adapter that appears to support just about every type of mains plug used worldwide, but does not alter voltage.

The reason for this is clear when sliding open the smaller of the two boxes, as the charger included with the Oneplus One has a European power plug. It operates on any voltage between 100-220VAC and outputs 2,100MaH.

But what’s in the big brown box??? Let’s pull that little red tab (a lovely touch) to rip open the cardboard and find out…

It’s… another box! And what appears to be a SIM card tray in a small plastic pouch – more on that in a moment. Now, let’s slide this box open… tissues at the ready guys…

Ooosh!!! There it is!!! Good job I had those tissues ready, as I’m drooling like a xenomorph looming over a fresh colonist. First impressions: It’s big! It’s black! And I want it! And I bet you want it too! But I’m such a tease, I’m going to leave my new toy cradled in its formed plastic tray, and find out what else we get in the box…

It’s a USB lead, and a keyring! A keyring??? Yes, a keyring. But wait – there’s more to it than that! The keyring contains the SIM tray ejection pin, and seeing as there’s already a SIM tray inserted into the phone, why not slip that shiny tool deep into its orifice and push it firmly home… oh I say. It’s a tsunami of filth in here…

Ah, that’s why we get a spare SIM tray! One is sized to take a micro SIM, the other takes a nano SIM. But if you still have one of the standard sized SIM card, then it’s about time you joined the 21st century and sorted that out. Honestly, some people, I’m amazed you’re not living in a cave eating raw meat.

Shall we get back to the handset, while the Neanderthal gulps down a bone marrow smoothie?

The front of the phone is very minimalist, with just a flush speaker grille and a front mounted camera lens breaking up the slab of black Gorilla glass that sits slightly proud of a chromed plastic bezel. There are capacitive buttons at the bottom – menu, home and back – that light up when needed.

The back is in a lovely textured black coating that Oneplus call Sandstone Black, and I can see why – it’s almost like coarse sandpaper. Useful for rubbing down your bodywork.

At the top we have the six lens Sony Exmor 13 megapixel lens and a dual LED flash, with the whole assembly sitting slightly proud of the body. There’s a matt black coating applied with cut-outs for the lens and flash. Next to it is one of the microphone holes – there are three microphones in total for active noise cancellation.

Below that, the Oneplus logo is embossed into the coating and is gloss black. Further down, the Cyanogen logo and product info is printed on top of the coating in mid grey ink.

The bottom of the handset has two speaker grilles, a microphone hole and a MicroUSB socket.

The top has a hole for the 3.5mm audio jack, and a microphone hole.

The left side has the volume rocker, which doesn’t stick out very far at all. Still easy to use, though.

The right side has the power button, which sticks out as far as the volume rocker. Again, easy to press.

Hey, what happens if I press it???

After holding the power button for a second, the phone buzzes and springs into life, showing me a couple of Cyanogen logos before running the usual set-up wizard familiar to any Android phone. Once completed, I was prompted to install the latest firmware update which was a very simple process to follow, all updates being delivered OTA (Over The Air) and installed without the use of a PC.

First impressions – the screen is lovely, really big and clear, and very typical of a good LCD screen. Blacks are a little grey, as expected, and only noticeable as my old phone – a Samsung Galaxy S4 – has an AMOLED screen that has truly black blacks and a lot more contrast. But this is still a very good screen with vibrant colours and crisp clear text – as any screen with full 1080p resolution and 401 pixels per inch would be. The handset sits well in my hand, and everything is within easy reach, even though it’s considerably larger than my S4. Weight is nice, and that back coating is so grippy! Really liking this texture, but I can’t help wondering how tough it is and how long it will last.

So now that’s done, let’s do some benchmarking!

PERFORMANCE

All tests are carried out with completely stock firmware running at stock speeds. All opened apps are closed before testing.

First up – Antutu.

An Antutu score of 44,803 puts it right at the top of the table for mobile performance, beating the Samsung Galaxy S5, The HTC M8t, and the Galaxy Note 3. Wow. Let’s put that into perspective here – this is a £270 phone beating phones that cost twice as much to buy SIM free. Serious performance, helped by Cyanogens highly optimised version of CyanogenMod 11 developed specifically for this phones Snapdragon 801 processor.

Geekbench next:

Again, another crushing blow for more expensive handsets – The Oneplus One single core score of 971 is only six points behind the brand new Moto X, but surprisingly its multi core performance is on a par with the LG G3 and well below the Moto X score of 2916. Further optimisations of the software will be needed to close that gap.

And finally: Quadrant.

The Oneplus One scores 24,801 against the Galaxy S5 score of 25,041 – but beats everything else. This phone can seriously punch above its weight, when cost is factored in.

CONCLUSION

Whichever way you look at the Oneplus One, you just can not escape the fact that it offers incredible value for money. Looking on a certain High Street mobile retailers website who made their name selling phones for cars from a warehouse, SIM free phones of a similar price include the LG G2 Mini, the Nexus 5 16gb, and the Sony Xperia T3. The Oneplus One doesn’t just beat them, it pounds them into a bloody pulp and daubs its body in their internal fluids while screaming defiance at the stars.

Up at the top end of the market, where the Samsung Galaxy S5, Motorola Moto X and LG G3 live in their high rise luxury apartments which smell of rich mahogany and have many leather bound books, that’s where the Oneplus One hunts. And it trades blows with them all day every day and emerges unbloodied. These are phones that cost upwards of £600, and they are being hounded by an upstart from the wrong side of the tracks. They must absolutely bloody hate it.

So, the Oneplus One is a complete no brainer, everybody who wants a top end phone should go and buy one – right?

Hold on there, cowboy - it’s a bit more complicated than that. Firstly, you can’t just buy one. You’ve got to wait for a round of invites to be announced by either following Oneplus on social media or signing up to their forum, and when they do come around you’ve got to act fast – this is a handset in demand and if you snooze you lose. And don’t forget here we’re dealing with a very new company who don’t have a huge track record of customer service like Samsung, Sony, LG et al – if something goes wrong with your new toy you can’t just pop down to your local mobile phone store and walk out with a fresh replacement. While the hardware might be top notch, we don’t know how long it will last. And the software is created by what effectively boils down to a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs. It’s like taking a high powered kit car out for a fast lap of the track – it might be blowing the wheels off everything else out there, but it was built by a bloke called Derek in a shed and if a wheel comes off you’re right up that famous creek with no paddle.

So – should you or shouldn’t you?

If you want the latest phone, but want the safety net that comes with a proven track record of performance and quality and the reassurance of a solid customer service record, then you’re going to be spending a lot of money with the big boys like Samsung, Sony, Motorola etc.

But if you want the latest phone, and don’t want to spend your hard earned cash supporting a multi billion pound advertising budget, retail stores, and fat executive salaries – and are prepared to take a gamble that if it all goes wrong you might end up getting bitten on the arse – then the Oneplus One is right up your street. Let’s face it – you could buy two of them and still have change from the price of a Galaxy Note 4.

The Oneplus One has to be the smartphone performance bargain of the year.