The OnePlus 6 Review: Among The Best Of 2018
by Andrei Frumusanu on July 27, 2018 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 6
Conclusion & End Remarks
The OnePlus 6 is a device that generally impressed me a lot. I was going into the review without any expectations or preconceptions as it was my first OnePlus device to more thoroughly review.
Design-wise, the OnePlus 6 marks a major change for the company as it employed a new industrial design. Most notably, this is visible in the back of the phone as the new glass cover marks a replacement for the previous metal chassis. The review unit which I’ve got had the new matte “Midnight black” variant which offers a sanded glass finish. I’ve actually really liked the finish as it feels very unique and is less of a fingerprint magnet than the usual glass back. Some people have noted that they didn’t like that it’s more slippery than the shiny glass variants – I can’t really comment on that other than saying that I personally didn’t have an issue with it.
The front of the phone also attracted a lot of attention due to the fact that OnePlus adopted a display notch in the OP6. As I’ve stated in past reviews such as Huawei’s P20’ pieces, I’ve actually had no issue at all with the notch. In practical terms it actually does offer more screen real-estate by having the notification icons and status icons where there usually would be phone bezel. You can black out the “ears” via a software option if you wish to and this works very well with the AMOLED screen, with only the occasional screen reflection reminding you that there’s actually a notch there.
The display of the OnePlus 6 is very good and has accurate colour profiles if that’s a requirement for you. Viewing angles are excellent, as is usual for an OLED display. The only two drawbacks here is that OnePlus by default doesn’t enable the high-brightness mode of which the hardware is capable of, and this comes at a detriment of legibility in bright scenarios such as direct sunlight. Also the screen resolution, while for most people might be sufficient, is for me personally too stretched out over the large screen and I would have really preferred the phone to come with a 1440p panel.
Performance of the OnePlus 6 is its absolute shining point as not only does it offer the same outstanding system performance that I’ve described in our Mi MIX 2S review, naming that one of the fastest devices I’ve ever experienced, but actually the OP6 also manages to distinguish itself from other Snapdragon 845 devices by having vastly superior sustained 3D performance. This latter, while I’m not exactly certain on the facts, is something that I want to attribute to a seemingly better thermal dissipation design on the OnePlus 6.
The camera on the OnePlus 6 also impressed me a lot in daylight shots. It was among one of the best cameras in terms of exposure, colour reproduction and resulting natural high dynamic range images. The 16MP shooter also was able to very much obtain some of the most detailed shots among current generation devices, although it was visible that OnePlus pushed quite hard in terms of the optics and the f/1.7 aperture, as we can discern some defects in the lens.
In night-time the OP6 did also well and is more than adequate as a shooter, although it’s hitting hardware boundaries as it just doesn’t have the same light capture abilities of other flagships.
The second sensor on the OP6 is one of very limited value as its only use-case is the depth perception within the portrait mode. Given that the bokeh blur is actually a computational effect applied in software, adding a second module just for depth perception is an expensive endeavour which doesn’t benefit the camera in any other capturing modes. I wish OnePlus had invested the resources into a wide-angle or telephoto lens instead.
Speaker wise, it’s probably one of the weaker phones out there as the sound quality is below other flagships. However the OnePlus 6 has a 3.5mm headphone jack – which can be make or break decision for a lot of buyers, so congratulations on OnePlus for keeping the option for the consumer.
The battery life of the phone is also excellent. It doesn’t top out the charts as it does only have a 3300mAh battery, but the SoC and screen are power efficient enough to make up for it.
Overall I think the OnePlus 6 is an excellent device, and while it’s not perfect, it offers incredible value at its price range and easily beats out any other contender. The Galaxy S9, in particular the Snapdragon variants, are still probably overall better devices, but also come at a price premium.
Generally I’ll easily recommend the OnePlus 6 to any buyer as I just don’t see any deal-breaking negatives that would make anybody regret purchasing the phone.
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jospoortvliet - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
On screen buttons, really? the 90's want you back... Nokia n9 and Palm WebOS showed the future years ago, it is a bloody shame it took Apple to bring it to Android. Very disappointing to notice so clearly that Google only innovated when forced, even though the better paradigm was already shown to work and just lying there to be adopted..Thefinn - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Yeah, notch makes it useless. I don't think so.What are you smoking? It's actually a great phone, but to each his own
amosbatto - Wednesday, August 22, 2018 - link
The problem with the notch is that it gives less space for the notification icons, which I find useful. Even worse is that 19.5:9 screens leave no room for front-facing speakers. Decent audio is far more important than more vertical pixels which I will never use. Also, the smaller the bezel, the less protection for the screen. Of course, when you make phones entirely wrapped in glass, you basically are inviting for it to be cracked. Unfortunately, nobody makes a decent phone like the LG V20 anymore, that is durable and designed to survive drops.128bit - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
I'm using s9 plus and iphone x and nope screen of s9 plus might be has higher resoulation and excellent brghtiness, but still not as good as iphone x OLED there's black crash at low brightness even though its made by samsung. Apple knows how to calibrate there screen very well and notch isn't on iphone x like android phones wanna be iphone.id4andrei - Saturday, July 28, 2018 - link
The problem you're referring to is an Android problem and that is the lack of a proper color management system. Samsung has color profiles corresponding to different standards such as sRGB or AdobeRGB built in but it's not a full solution.Skelter - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
After one month with the phone, I don't get the notch hate that seems to be trending in all tech related sites. There's really no downside to it. It hides on its own when needed and gives you extra screen space over what would have been otherwise a bezel. If you really hate how it looks, you can just hide it and the device will look like it was made with the same bezels the S9+ has.The only downsides the phone has, in my opinion, are the speaker (not bad, but not flagship worthy either), the glass back without wireless charging (not a deal breaker at all, but it would have been nice to get either Wireless Charging or a tougher design) and the camera (which is, at least since the last update improved its quality, almost as good as Pixel 2/iPhone X/S9).
By the way, I wouldn't say Samsung's S9 has "nearly the same price". Even if you buy the cheapest S9 model Samsung is offering, there's still a $140 difference. Maybe it's worth it for some, since its screen is the best there is (even if it is smaller in the basic S9 model), its camera is slightly better and it has Wireless Charging and an IP68 rating. But that doesn't make OP6 a bad choice at all.
johnhopf - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Your review is great, but I really object to this kind of camera evaluation.The only way you can take a decent landscape shot with the sky in it, is if the sun is setting behind you so the sky in front of you is dark and the scenery is illuminated.
When you take a photo of midday sky and trees underneath it, the sky is probably 50 times brighter than the trees, and the only way to bring them in line is insane over-the-top "hdr" that gives the whole image the same mezzo-blah brightness.
I'd recommend looking at real art photography for a while, to see how the shadows actually clip into blackness. My favorite photographer lately is Jay Maisel, and he has lots of good photos on his website.
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
> When you take a photo of midday sky and trees underneath it, the sky is probably 50 times brighter than the trees, and the only way to bring them in line is insane over-the-top "hdr" that gives the whole image the same mezzo-blah brightness.> I'd recommend looking at real art photography for a while
Sorry to be blunt here, but most people don't care about art photography. The notion that you can only take a picture with the sun behind you is also outdated, the average person is not going to follow any of that advice. On the day I took those pictures I had dozens of tourists around me taking the pictures with their smartphones, for those people, they expect the smartphone to just deal with the circumstances.
The point of these comparisons is to put the phone into difficult situations and see how they behave. Computational photography is very much a thing and it opens up new avenues. Look at the bridge photo of the P20Pro - it manages to do that because it has the technology in the sensor to do a different exposure for each physical pixel in the binned logical pixel, resulting in outstanding DR. Also as demonstrated by the OP6 here and some other phones, the results can actually be quite good if the HDR is well tuned.
If one phone manages to do well then it means it raises the bar in terms of what's to be expected of other flagship devices in general.
FunBunny2 - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
if memory serves, Maisel has been using a view camera and contact printing for rather a long time. in any case, the dynamic range of film, using zone method, beats any minuscule phone sensor by a light year or so. but, just like the Kodak of the 1940s, phone snapshots aren't intended to be anything more than momentos. even a $100 digital camera will do better.Impulses - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I'd be surprised if any camera <$400 did better than a phone tbh, under that price bracket they'd feature the same miniscule sensors and often slower lenses (possibly better corrected and definitely able to stop down, but it's debatable how much you really need to stop down for DoF with these small sensors).Meanwhile smart HDR/stacking algorithms will definitely give phones an edge, these modes tend to suck even in high end cameras and photography enthusiasts just do it manually in post. Past $400 or so cameras definitely jump ahead tho, at that point you can easily buy something with a 1" (Canon G9 X) or even 4/3 sensor (Panasonic GX850).
Obviously these are not exactly $400 phones either, even the OP has blown significantly over that threshold, but still... I'm all in favor of suggesting people look at cameras rather than side-grading phones for marginal gains tho. I was impressed by my Pixel but I didn't buy it for the camera and still vastly prefer my dedicated cameras.