Original:
Since early June I have been using the OnePlus Three as my daily driver, replacing my old OnePlus One. I currently reside in the eastern US and in a metropolitan area so coverage and usage might be different than others.
What a typical day’s use for me is:
- Usually about 3 - 6 hours of bluetooth connectivity
- About 2 - 5 hours of screen on time
- Many unlocks to check chats, internet, etc.
To add some perspective, I did very similar things with my OnePlus One, though I heavily tweaked settings and ran an updated version of Cyanogenmod 12.1 with a super small install of Google Apps. With the OnePlus 3, I ran their OxygenOS 3.0.1 (I think that’s what was on it before) and upgraded to 3.2.1 a week ago, which means keeping all of the stock Google Apps as well.
Build
When it comes to build quality, this device is solid.
The metal unibody design gives to a sleek and smooth surface, but not slippery like glass backing, that feels fantastic in the hand. The side buttons all around feel solid and have a responsive, tactile click when pressed. The notification slider is also textured and takes a bit more force to move so accidentally changing your alert priority doesn’t ever happen.
On the face of the phone is the single ceramic home button which is smooth to touch though does not actually depress, which has a rather nice, smooth feeling and the fingerprint sensor itself is accurate and super quick to use. On the bottom is the single grilled speaker that gets relatively loud and does not distort much at the highest volume, but can easily block sound with just a finger. There is also the USB-C connector and the audio jack down there, which is where I prefer it!
The screen is a 5.5in 1080p AMOLED display, which is lovely to look at and gets bright enough to read outside, though other phones I have seen read much better outdoors.
The only real complaint I have is that the camera on the back does stick out noticeably and makes me hesitant to set it down sometimes even though the Gorilla glass and metal edges around the lens will likely keep it from being damaged.
Camera
The camera is 16MP with optical image stabilization as well as electronic image stabilization, an HDR mode, dynamic de-noise, and RAW image support.
As to how well that performs, I’ve found it to be a steady improvement over my OnePlus One with more detail, shooting faster, and it works better in low light, though still not that great in such cases. While shooting, I’ve found that the EIS actually does help quite a bit in keeping my shots in focus. It really only has a problem with motion in the scene so the subject often looks great but some moving things elsewhere can get blurred.
As for video, it tends to look alright. I am not too great at critiquing video quality so I’ll leave it at that.
Battery
I tend to keep the screen at 35% screen brightness, auto-brightness on, gestures on, fingerprint scanner on, data on about half the time, wi-fi almost always on, location off most times, bluetooth on about 3-6 hours a day, email sync off until I refresh, keeping apps open while leaving only one chat app up all day with those notifications on.
All that said, I get around 6 hours of screen on time, which is enough to last me more than a full day with about 20-30% left most days. I’ve found that the Dash charging feature actually does what it claims, usually netting me about 63% in 30 minutes, so when I wake up to 20% charge I can just plug it in while I shower or get breakfast for about fifteen minutes and can trust it to last me the rest of the day just fine. The super speedy charging times make the slightly smaller battery more palatable and I actually love that, though still would like more battery to at least fill out the rest of the phone so the camera wouldn’t stick out so much.
Operating System and Customizations
OxygenOS is almost like stock Android with some nifty features specific to Oxygen, such as the dark mode, swiping left of the home screen to access the shelf, (a place for your most used apps and to take quick notes), and button mapping for the capacitive buttons. All around the system feels super clean and polished, though I still added Nova Launcher instead because I had customized so much on my last phone that it felt wrong to do without xP
Issues
Probably fixable with an update, but there have been two issues I’ve dealt with. The first being a minor issue with bluetooth audio having a small hiccup every eight minutes or so. Not sure what that’s about.
Update: This issue is still present, though not in the same manner as before. Now when playing in my car, the audio seems to cut out at somewhat random intervals like a minute after I begin audio playback or six minutes in, with varying intervals of six to eighteen minutes until the next hiccup. I have not noticed this issue on other devices so it might be specific to older versions of Bluetooth than 4.0.
The second being the pocket problem others have reported in which the screen/fingerprint sensor is still active while being in a pocket and drains battery because it is still taking inputs. I’ve found placing the phone with the screen away from your leg helps but I hope that’s fixed so because it isn’t something that has been an issue with their previous phones of which I am aware.
Update: The pocket problems was solved back in July.
Lastly, 1080p 60fps videos only play at 480p 30fps on YouTube for some reason. I think it might be due to YouTube not recognizing it as a device that is capable of playing 1080p 60fps but time will tell if that will be fixed.
Update: Video playback has successfully been able to play 720p 60fps videos since about July. No idea if 1080p 60fps will ever come.
Update: 1080p 60fps has been added and looks great!
Overall Opinions
Since owning the phone, I have purchased and currently use one of their covers to add a little bulk to help the camera bump and another dash charger + cable, which for some reason is flat unlike the round cable that came with the phone itself. Odd and seemingly of lesser quality than the round cable but it’s too soon to tell if there is any difference.
I love this phone. Haven’t really used other phones so can’t compare it to things like the Galaxy S7 or anything other than the original OnePlus One, but compared to that, the Three does everything much faster, smoother, and adds a ton of nice features that I think I’d be remiss to lose going back. For $400, you really can’t beat the value offered here unless the lack of microSD or lack of removable battery is a deal breaker for you.
Edit: Another couple of things that I forgot to mention are that the vibration is not adjustable in settings and that the capacitive buttons are locked to “back” and “recent apps.” I would have liked to change vibration sensitivity like on the OnePlus One because it seems a little weak a times, though not when unlocking or getting messages/calls, and I really liked having a “context menu” capacitive button instead of the “recent apps” one because double tapping home is much quicker than the dedicated one which has a delay.
Lastly, I have enabled sRGB mode so the colors are more accurate now and have been really enjoying it this way. The saturated colors look neat for a while on the AMOLED display but it got tiring to look at. Everything looks great now :3
Oct Edit: Fixed some sentences and added updated information to properly reflect the current status of the phone according to the criteria of the review.
JUNE 2018 UPDATE:
My goodness has this phone aged really, really well. The OnePlus 5 and 5T released last year, the 6 this year and I still feel no reason to replace my 3 yet. I have dropped the phone many more times over the past couple years and that tempered glass screen protector I applied so long ago has developed its own scratches and smaller cracks but still is very usable and comfortable feeling and does not really affect video playback for me. Overall, it has been a fantastically solid and responsive phone the entire time I’ve owned it.
In the time I’ve had the device, I have noticed that OnePlus does still provide updates to the phone; about 5-6 big updates a year, I think, with which I have been pretty pleased. If it had been Samsung or Motorola, expectations would be far lower. This actually is even better support than they provided for the OnePlus One after the first couple years past that release.
Perhaps the biggest question you all might have is about battery life. Well, I am happy to report that the Three still provides 5-6 hours of screen on time during normal use after 2 years of continuous usage. There are some days when I drain battery faster but I have increased usage of certain applications like YouTube for downloading and video playback, more podcast listening on bluetooth, increased messenger app usage, etc. I still get so much use out of this phone and it rarely ever has any issues other than specific apps with their own issues.
For being the $400 phone at launch I purchased years ago, I could not be happier with the long lasting performance it has offered. At this point, I might still get a 6 or if they release a 6T later this year if only to have a change of pace and see if anything truly is worth upgrading over the Three but given that this phone had 6GB RAM, 64GB storage, NFC, bluetooth, great camera, and build quality. yet the only major changes have been with design in the newer OnePlus phones. I will update next whenever I actually replace this phone and hope this was a fun read for those who got this far xP