The OnePlus 3 Review
by Brandon Chester on June 20, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 3
GPU Performance
GPU performance is one of the areas where Snapdragon 810 actually tended to do quite well. It's also the case that GPUs generally see larger performance gains year over year than CPUs. We already saw how Adreno 530 performs in the LG G5 review, but the device being compared to was the LG G4, which used Snapdragon 808. The OnePlus 3 represents an opportunity to compare a Snapdragon 810 device to its successor using Snapdragon 820.
The OnePlus 3 does very well in 3DMark Sling Shot. In both the physics and graphics tests it trails the LG G5 slightly, but the gap isn't anything truly significant. Exynos 8890 is still not something I can compare to until our Galaxy S7 review is posted, but barring that it's clear that Snapdragon 820's Adreno 530 gives the fastest smartphone performance in this test, and when looking at the graphics performance the performance is over two times faster than the OnePlus 2.
In BaseMark ES 3.1's on screen test the OnePlus 3 manages a significant lead over the LG G5 as a result of its lower resolution. In the off screen 1080p test both phones have essentially the same performance, which is what you'd expect. It looks like Adreno 530 doesn't make the same gains in this test that it does in some others, and it's not clear whether this is just the result of driver optimizations or something about the benchmark that is able to perform batter on other GPU architectures, which could be contributing to the iPhone's lead even in the off screen test.
In GFXBench Car Chase the performance of the OnePlus 3 is in line with the LG G5. On screen performance is significantly higher due to the lower resolution display, while off screen performance at 1080p is about the same as the G5 and exactly the same as the on screen result. As far as absolute GPU performance goes, both of our Snapdragon 820 devices are at the top of the chart for absolute performance, and that's good news for anyone playing games or using software that benefits from a powerful mobile GPU.
NAND Performance
The OnePlus 3 moves to a UFS 2.0 NAND solution, which OnePlus claims is three times faster than the eMMC storage used in the OnePlus 2. In more realistic testing you probably won't end up achieving speeds three times faster than the OnePlus 2 since it actually wasn't slow at all by eMMC standards, but there should be a decent uplift in NAND performance nonetheless.
The move to UFS 2.0 brings healthy gains over the OnePlus 2's storage performance, although as I said, the OnePlus 2 didn't perform poorly at all by the standards of eMMC devices. Sequential read and write performance is actually the best that I've measured so far on an Android device. We're still not looking at anything close to what you get for sequential performance on iOS devices, but there are some other factors at play like the fact that the iPhone was a 128GB unit while our Android devices are usually 32GB or 64GB devices. In any case, the OnePlus 3 doesn't present any problems with storage performance, and you certainly won't run into the same issues that you can with budget smartphones at the $200-300 range where the eMMC solutions can be exceptionally slow.
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Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
>> So you'll test if it's an Apple product using a standard created for projectors, OK. The Galaxy Tab S was touted as supporting the Adobe RGB standard- you didn't test that(either generation).iOS supports colour profiles. Android doesn't. Simple as that.
Matt Humrick - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
sRGB is NOT our personal preference. We would love to see proper wide gamut support, and when a device supports a different gamut, we test it like we did for the iPad Pro 9.7". But until Android supports color management, testing against sRGB is the only thing that makes sense. A few other points:1) Most of the content you're going to view on a mobile device uses the sRGB color space, including web pages, games, and even the pictures and video taken with mobile devices.
2) Viewing a file intended for DCI on an iPad Pro 9.7" results in properly rendered colors, because iOS supports color management. Viewing the same file on an Android device with a wide-gamut panel results in innaccurate, oversaturated colors, because Android does not support color management and assumes everything is sRGB. Color space support requires both hardware and software support. The OP3, like almost every mobile device, lacks the software component.
3) Some people prefer these more vivid colors even if they do not match the content creator's intent. That's fine. We even help quantify how vivid the colors will look with our saturation test (each square represents a 20% increase in saturation up to 100% sRGB target), and a visual example with the color swatch.
zodiacfml - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
Thanks to all Anandtech writers. I appreciate your replies in the comments.BenSkywalker - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
I guess you just have a very unique perspective. From a professional perspective this doesn't make sense at all- ICC color profiles are simply one way to handle forced color accuracy, and not a terribly good one at that as GPU overrides of color balance are fairly normal anyway on most devices. From a consumer perspective wanting the least amount of colors possible doesn't make sense in any rational way that I can come up with. Apple's way of handling things gives you two calibration targets- one is the narrowest in use, the other designed for movie projectors. Force decode True Color is a pretty useful option when trying to maximize the range covered.
1)Most content isn't calibrated. Period. Content that has calibration as a very high priority, isn't calibrated using sRGB.
2)When moving from a wider gamut space to a narrower one you deal with truncation, where are you getting that it is going to go through multiple up and down scaled balances? That isn't how it works.
3)You say that's fine, and we see articles spending hundreds of words bashing displays if they don't do it under the most narrowly defined set of parameters imaginable.
BenSkywalker - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
Side note- looking at your reported numbers, it appears they were shooting for Japan's NTSC standard as their white point is far closer to that then the US NTSC. I'm not sure where Japan is on your world map, mine obviously looks a little different :)
Oyeve - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
Would be nice if you guys actually did a real S7 review so we could see a real comparison against this OP3. But no, we have skewed data that really is not relevant at all. Way to go guys!leopard_jumps - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
Good job ! Yet something is missing : photos and videos in incandescent bulb light , are they yellowish .zodiacfml - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
One question with camera testing. How come you still don't have a studio lab for camera testing? It can help uncover some design compromises. It may not have the value for a consumer purchase decision but it has entertainment value, at least for me.ElecDroid - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
Thank you for the unbiased review💯 I was really thinking about buying this phone. The display is of the utmost importance to me. My 3 needs,wants or what have you when I'm shopping for a new smartphone follows. Display,chip performance,OS updates. If the display isn't top notch. I'm already turning the page. Which is why I have a Note 5. Just about all other sites are praising this phone. I can always trust Anandtech to do very thorough reviews! Thank You!aryonoco - Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - link
It would be really, really good if Anandtech could start listing the LTE bands that a device supports.The OnePlus 3 for example, has no SKUs which support all of Australian LTE bands, meaning that if you live in Australia, it will give you a very sub-optimal experience, irrespective of which carrier you use.
This is vital information for a smartphone user. It would be great if AT paid a little attention to this.