OnePlus X : Review
The OnePlus X is the mid-budget smartphone buy the company who makes flagship killer's.The One Plus company is just 2 years old and this is the third phone from the company with the previous two being blockbusters. . Making the X, OnePlus eschewed its usual formula of stuffing the best processor in a ridiculously cheap phone. Instead, it has re-purposed the internals of its debut OnePlus One into a smaller phone with a lower $249 price tag.Let's see if it wow's the mid-range customers ?
Look and feel
First of ,the OnePlus X is smaller and easier to handle than either of the company's previous smartphones. Apart from the obvious difference in screen size that dictates the length and width, the OnePlus X is also considerably slimmer at 6.9mm. Combined with a metal frame, glass back and a slight curve in the glass front at its edges, the X is attractive and feels great to hold.
The back of the OnePlus X is glass, and is surprisingly sturdy and resistant to damage.he black material under the glass makes the back highly reflective, a look we rather like. The top-left corner has the camera and flash, while the OnePlus logo sits just inside the top-third.However speaking of the back , is made of glass , so it's no doubt that this one is a fingerprint magnet, but when we say the white one in comparison to the black , you can't see the fingerprint enhanced in white as they do in the black variant.
The notifications slider is another feature we found interesting. This is a three-position switch which lets you choose how many notifications you wish to receive. The lowest position will allow all notifications through, the middle position will only enable priority notifications, while the top position blocks everything.
Display
The OnePlus X has a 5-inch display , which is a 1080p AMOLED, that typically means superb viewing angles, bright colors and blacks beyond the event horizon. There's no contradiction here. Colors are indeed punchy ,viewing angles are great and of course,since AMOLED doesn't have a back-light, the overall blacks are fantastic.But there are some issues, it's not laminated, and there's quite a gap between the display and the cover-glass. It's not a huge issue, but it's there. I also take issue with the color balance of the display.If you look closely you will have that color shifeted , otherwise it's just a normal display.
Camera
The OnePlus X has a 13-megapixel f/2.2 primary camera with single-tone flash, along with an 8-megapixel f/2.4 front camera. Both are capable of recording up to 1080p video in normal mode. The rear camera can additionally record slow-motion video at 120fps, but only at a resolution of 720p.The camera app is designed to look like Google Camera, but has a few differences. There are buttons for quickly toggling the flash, self-timer and camera switcher, but accessing beauty, HDR and clear image mode is a two-step process. Video, panorama, time lapse and slow-motion modes also require some swiping to get to. Although Oxygen 2.1 brings a manual mode to the OnePlus 2, manual settings remain absent on the OnePlus X even after the update. You can, however, easily set the photo and video resolution.
The camera itself is quick to shoot, and is excellent in terms of color and lighting reproduction. Shadows and sunlight interweave splendidly in outdoor shots, while indoor pictures bring out the best in both well-lit and low-light conditions. Unfortunately, that's where our praise for the camera ends. Looking at our sample shots closely, we found a glaring lack of detail in every shot we took.Noise and grain are plentiful without even zooming in all the way, and it's impossible to distinctly make out any detail in pictures of subjects that are more than a few feet away. Even in close-ups, anything outside the focus area is utterly lacking in definition and clarity.
Software
OnePlus Oxygen OS is very good. I hadn't really spent time with it before the X arrived -- unless a cursory swipe across home screens on a OnePlus 2 counts -- but I'd like to spend more time with it now. If you've used stock Android, you won't find too many differences visually, but there are some additional, genuinely customization options on offer.By default the phone has a "dark" theme, which changes the menus to a deep black and the app drawer to a dark gray. In theory, due to the peculiarities of AMOLED technology, this uses less power than the regular white Android theme.
In the settings menu you'll also find some other options, one of which lets you deactivate the capacitive buttons and opt for on-screen instead.There are a few token gestures for when the screen's off -- double-tap to wake up, draw a V for flashlight, an O for Camera, etc. -- and a weird "Shelf" thing for storing frequently apps that I switched off, but you're mostly just looking at Android Lollipop, for all its good and bad points.
Performance & Battery
The OnePlus X runs on a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC with an integrated Adreno 330 GPU. This chip was used in many of the popular flagship smartphones of 2014. Although it's not the most modern now, it's still a capable SoC that offers excellent performance and outdoes this year's Snapdragon 615 in most benchmarks.The OnePlus X performed capably in most of our benchmark tests. It scored 24fps in GFXBench and maxed out in 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme, producing a score of 16,207 in Ice Storm Unlimited. AnTuTu returned a score of 40,773, while Quadrant produced a score of 24,013.
The X ran for 11 hours, 54 minutes in our video loop test, which is excellent for a 2525mAh battery. However, we found that in practical situations, the battery wasn't quite as capable. As previously stated, gaming and other intensive tasks would cause serious battery drain. The device will only last a full day on a complete charge if used carefully and conservatively. While calls and texting don't affect the battery too much, Web browsing and gaming tend to eat away at it much more than we've seen on other similarly devices.
Wrap-Up
OnePlus has made serious waves in the smartphone industry since its rather dramatic arrival on the scene less than a year ago. It's offered products that have matched flagship specifications at prices that are much lower.Though through it's only invite system , OnePlus has raised many questions around it too .Where does the OnePlus X stand in all of this? It's a decent mid-budget device that offers strong performance using a dated but powerful SoC and more than enough RAM. It also boasts of great looks, a premium feel, good software, and a superb screen. However, the quality of the build is somewhat questionable, and the camera is utterly lacking in detail and definition. Heat dissipation issues have a tendency to negatively affect battery life.
OnePlus has proven it can make a competent phone on an even slimmer budget. But it hasn't made one that makes sense over its slightly more expensive cousin, or even one that can justify the price hike over a Moto G.
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