OnePlus 2 Review

The predecessor of OnePlus 2 was a great success, it was a fully fledged flagship at a very reasonable price of $299, but it came with a catch. The catchw as that you could buy the phone unless you had an invitation. The same rule has been applied to OnePlus 2 but the price has increased. Can it be every bit as successful as its predecessor? Read on to find out.

Description

The description of OnePlus 2 includes:

• Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 Chipset
• Quad-core 1.56 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 1.82 GHz Cortex-A57 processor
• Android OS, v5.1 (Lollipop) operating system
• 3GB RAM, 16GB storage and no expansion slot for external memory
• 8mm length; 74.9mm width and 9.9mm thickness
• A display of 5 inches and 1080 x 1920 pixels display resolution
• It weighs 175g
• Price of $389

Build

• Design wise the handset is not very pleasing.
• The Sandstone cover of OnePlus One has made its way to OnePlus 2 as well. I was and it still is very unique which kind of makes it a signature for OnePlus Company.
• Physically the sandstone cover feels very cheap as compared to OnePlus One. It is also very rough which makes it uncomfortable to hold. The intention of making it less resistant was actually good but the result has come out negatively.
• The physical material of the device is metal which is quite durable and lasting.
• On the right edge you will find the power and volume rocker button.
• On the left side there is a dedicated 3-step switch which allows you to toggle between Normal, Priority-only Notifications and Do-Not-Disturb mode.
• The navigational keys are present on the front.
• The Home button is also present but it cannot be pressed, you can only tap it.
• The Home button also has a fingerprint scanner.
• The back-plate can be removed, beneath the back-plate there is a slot for dual SIMs.
• The battery cannot be removed.
• The handset is only available in sandstone black.

 

Display

• The device offers a 5.5 inch display with 1080 x 1920 pixels of display resolution.
• The display is of IPS LCD.
• The pixel density is 401ppi, so the pixelization cannot be noticed at all.
• The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4.
• The colour calibration has gone a bit awry.
• Maximum brightness goes up to 564 nits which is awesome.
• Minimum brightness goes does to 2 nits.
• Colours contrasts are excellent.
• Colours temperature at 7554 Kelvin is just average as it gives the screen a cold look.
• Overall the device has a quality display with just a tid-bit of fault.

Processor

• The device has Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 Chipset
• Quad-core 1.56 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 1.82 GHz Cortex-A57 processor
• Adreno 430 has been used as the Graphical processing unit.
• The handset is 3 GB of RAM which is more than enough for most of the tasks.
• One good thing about the processor is that the phone does not heat up with constant use.
• The processing is very smooth but a few lags were noticed during scrolling.
• The processor easily caters for heavy games like Asphalt 8.

Memory & Battery

• The handset comes in two versions of built in storage; one is of 16 GB while the other has 64 GB. The 64 GB offer is very generous for almost all the users.
• There is no slot for microSD card but a secondary SIM slot is present if someone wants to make use of the.
• The device has a 3300mAh non-removable battery.
• The battery is not very powerful.
• Only 6 hours and 38 minutes of constant screen on time was recorded which is even less than its predecessor that scored 8 hours and 5 minutes.
• Even the charging time is very high, it takes 150 minute to charge completely. The competitors of OnePlus 2 are ready in half the time.

Camera

• The rear holds a 13 megapixel camera with a sensor of 1/2.6”. It has a wide aperture lens of f/2.0.
• Pixel size is 3μm.
• The feature of optical image stabilization is present which compensates for the shaking.
• On the front there is a 5 megapixel one.
• The device has a dual LED flash.
• Shutter speed is really fast.
• There are not many features; there is a beauty mode, HDR mode and a clear image mode.
• HDR mode and the clear image mode are not very nice to work with, instead of improving the pictures the modes just over sharpens the images.
• In panorama mode the stitching of the images is great but the but they are only limited to 12 megapixels.
• Noise distortion is nearly absent which is great.
• The images are very detailed and of high quality.
• Indoor image quality is very impressive. The camera handles itself pretty nicely in low light conditions.
• The rear camera can record videos at 4K and 1080p. The 4K video mode is rarely used as its videos are just space-eaters.
• Slow motion videos can be recorded at 720p.
• The front camera can also record videos at 1080p.
• Laser autofocus is present but it does not work accurately and ruins most of the videos.

Speakers & Mic

• The speaker in OnePlus 2 is one hell of a noise maker. Very very loud music can be played but the clarity is not good.
• Speaker placement at the bottom is not very good as our hands covered it most of the time.
• Call quality is great.
• Voice is very clear at the other end of the calls.

Features

• The handset runs Android OS, v5.1 (Lollipop) operating system.
• OnePlus 2 has applied OxygenOS as the interface.
• There are many tweaks for example various gestures are used to directly jump to the message and camera app, gestures can be customized, double tap can wake up the screen.
• A fingerprint scanner has been incorporated in the Home button which works perfectly.
• There are many useless apps like ShareIt or ImiWallpaper, but you can’t uninstall them as they are system apps.
• OnePlus 2 has two browsers; Chrome and OnePlus’s own custom browser.
• The features of Bluetooth 4.1, LTE, A-GPS plus Glonass and 5GHz Wi-Fi 802.11ac.
• The phone comes with micro USB Type C cable which is pretty useful but if you forgot it home during travelling the phone will be useless as no other USB cable can be used.
• There feature of Near Field Communication is not present.

The Package will include:

• OnePlus 2
• Flat USB to microUSB Type C cable (reversible)
• Wall charger

Conclusion

On the whole OnePlus has delivered an average handset. OnePlus One was a fair handset with good specifications at a very low price on the other hand OnePlus 2 has average specifications and the price has increased. OxygenOS is under-developed, performance is somewhat slow but the camera and display are amazing. We cannot complain against the memory but the battery is mediocre. In the end that handset is not so bad, one can consider buying it.

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AK

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