[OnePlus 6 Guides, News, & Discussion] Cst79:
Hello everyone,

I received my OnePlus 6 today and I am very happy. It's the 6/64 model. I come from a Galaxy S7 Edge and a Galaxy A3 2017.

Here are my thoughts about it:

- Build quality is exemplary, I played with Huawei Mate 10 Pro and P20 and the OP6 is way better built, very close if not identical quality to Samsung's best phones. For me, a phone needs to look "professional", not plasticky or gimmicky. This one delivers !

- The case that comes with the phone is very high quality, I am amazed. It's not a simple case, it has many interesting features: sides are matte finished and provide high grip, it has raised corners, the corner protection is exemplary. Plus, it fits like a glove. Don't waste your money on another case until you try the stock one (I unfortunately did - I have the Nylon Bumper case on the way).

- Screen is gorgeous and perfectly calibrated, I have a Surface Pro 4 and a Surface Pro 5 (perfectly calibrated screens) and the calibration of the OP6 is almost identical. Colors are exactly as they should be, whites are perfectly balanced. And I love notched screens, I want as little bezel as possible, really no complaints !

- The speed of the phone is incredible, I have never used a phone so fast, much faster than the S8 and S9 that I have used for a few minutes. Web browsing speed is in another league compared to everything I used before.

- It came charged at 50%, and I got 3h of SOT and 9h of total usage from the factory 50% charge (with app installations, updates, a lot of web browsing, 1 hour of music playing to bluetooth headset, etc.)

- Pictures in low light are way over my expectations, on par with the S7 Edge (which has a great camera setup).

- Software is really great, light and customizable.

- The double-tap to wake is a great feature and very reliable.

- Everything works as expected, no quirks. At this price, I was expecting something to be really off, but no, everything is great ! :)

- I have never used a SD card (ok, used once), wireless charging, and always protected my phone from water, so I consider the lack of those features a non-issue for me.

Now for the less good parts:

- (Biggest issue if you come from Samsung or LG phones): Always-On display is missing and this is a significant issue (although it was present in the firmware before the updates, hopefully they bring it back !), I also like the LED notifications even more especially with the Light Flow app, but the problem is that this phone's LED is a little dim and small. However, it does the job.

- Phone is a little bigger than I would like, but really, it's nitpicking, it fits very well in my front pocket and I am already used to it

- Rear-placed fingerprint sensor makes it unusable for me, basically I will never use it, I can't use it in the car, I can't use it when the phone is on the table

- Face unlock is incredibly fast, but it doesn't work at an angle, when the phone is on the table and you glance at it, you can't use it when the phone is on the table.

- Your best bet for unlocking this phone reliably in the car or on the table is to wear a smartwatch and enable Smart Lock (I have a Pebble 2 - great smartwatch that wipes the floor with any Wear OS watch - think always-on screen and 8 days of battery life and great notification management - enough said).

- If you enable gestures instead of buttons (gestures are incredibly easy and intuitive on the OP6) you can't double tap to lock screen...that's a big issue for me, I don't want to press the power button a lot for durability reasons. For now I have left the navigation buttons in place (double tap home will lock the screen) but I hope a solution will be provided eventually. EDIT: a very recent OnePlus Launcher release just added "double-tap anywhere on the home screen to lock", so you can count this issue out :)

- The bottom-firing speaker is not ideal, many times I used the phone in portrait mode in bed and I cover the speaker with my finger. Samsung has a smarter placement on the side. Of course, dual front speakers would be nice but I don't use the speakers a lot and I much prefer the small bezels instead.

Conclusion: all in all, I consider the OnePlus 6 the most "balanced" flagship of the current generation of flagships. For me, aside from the lack of AOD (which will hopefully be reintroduced), it has almost no flaws. And the price is just...fair to the customer, most of the others have ripoff prices for phones that are missing critical features like decent battery life, for example.

This was my quick review.

Thanks ! :)