[OnePlus 3 & 3T Cross Device Development] Mostafa Wael:
Initial Impressions

I've been using the release build of PA for over a week and i am delighted to say that I have been treated so well so far. It is easily noticeable to spot the team's serious commitment to providing the smoothest and more robust user experience possible., even through some little yet obvious niggles in the UI that's been evident in other ROMs. For instance, on other ROMs, there is a slight lag between tapping on the Google Search bar on the homescreen and the actual animation of displaying the search history cards, where the screen would momentarily stall with a white screen displayed and the Google app would be a bit unresponsive for a second or two. On the current PA build, this lag is almost non-existent and is quite smoothly rendered! Swiping left to get the Google Now homescreen has been a bit stuttery on some of the ROMs out there, but not on PA! The ROM suffers from absolutely ZERO major UI hiccups based on what i have seen in the past week. Things only get better when you launch the camera. The post processing is remarkably improved in my humble opinion, despite me not being that much in photography. HDR mode is more effective, compared to what i have seen from the OOS camera on OxygenOS, and thankfully the HDR processing is not overdone like other OEMs' HDR mode (ahem ahem....HTC...ahem), which is extremely pleasing to say the least. However, the camera is still not what i would call a "refined" product. Yes the pictures come out well processed and much better than other camera solutions, but sadly it seems that there are some rough edges in the camera app that I have inevitably tripped over. Choosing to shoot in OptiZoom mode will render the camera inaccessible on the spot, and touch-to-focus is broken in the AutoHDR mode. But overall, the camera experience provided by the PA team has been generally impressive and is quite difficult to abandon and substitute with any other camera solution. I am sure the photography folks would be of more help when it comes to constructively assessing the camera performance, since it is not my bag to be quite frank.

Much to my surprise (and everyone's else), the rough edges unfortunately continue to be present in other substantial terrains. PA browser is far from satisfactory, with severe frame drops and inevitable obnoxious jitters while scrolling a webpage in reasonable speed, an issue that is yet to be spotted when using Chrome instead to browse the web. And rather strangely, Pocket Judge didn't make its way to the stable release build, leaving a greatly sour aftertaste and a preposterously high idle drain rate the moment you slip your phone in a tight pair of (ripped) jeans that teens wear daily nowadays.

Speaking of which, the battery life has been quite impressive for my particular usage pattern. Active drain rate ranges from 10%/hr to 14%/hr, while the idle drain rate depends on whether the phone is (sadly) pocketed in slacks or in tights. However, when lying lazily on my desk with Airplane mode engaged, the idle drain hovers around the 0.3%/hr mark, which is just as impressive as the active drain rate. Sadly though, this impressive idle drain rate is unlikely to stay around if you slipped in some slim jeans. However, with such good active drain rates, it is easy to crack the 5 hrs SOT over a whole day of usage, which should reassure you if you are going on a date after hanging around for a bit. And why are we worrying about the battery that much? We ain't wall huggers after all, and Dash is always around to save the day :)

To sum it up in a few words, it is too hard to abandon the ROM after using it for a week. The unmatched smoothness across the whole UI, the top-notch performance, the improved camera experience and the efficiency are too addictive to leave.. Yes there are a few niggles here and there, which thankfully have been reported by the enthusiastic eagle-eyed users, but they are far from being deal breakers. Only if i can get to date my GF with my phone pocketed in my tight jeans without losing so much juice registering my pants as faulty mismatching fingerprints, it will be....the ultimate daily driver for a long while to come. But hey, there must be something to drive us #paranoid :D

Cheers!