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
Video Recording
Video recording on the OnePlus 6 is done on 720P, 1080P 30 or 60fps, and 4K 30 or 60fps. The camera has OIS in all modes, but on top of that uses EIS in 720P and the other 30fps modes. Unfortunately there’s no software switch for the EIS so you’re getting what OnePlus is giving you- which comes at a cost of reduced field-of-view.
EIS stabilisation works extremely well and results in a very stable and detailed video. Unfortunately because you can’t turn it off you can’t independently compare the EIS in the same capture mode to see how the detail retention works.
One thing to note was that the 1080p60 footage was extremely disappointing as it was very blurry. Looking at the encoding the 1080p30 is done on AVC on High Profile 4.0 at 20Mbps while the 1080p60 footage is encoded at High 4.2 at 40Mbps, so there must be something wrong in terms of the ISP part of the video pipeline that results in the much reduced image quality. It’s also notable that I found it to focus slower in 60fps mode than in the 30fps modes.
The 4K footage doesn’t suffer from the same degradation when going to the higher frame-rate. Here in both modes there’s great amount of detail retention. The 4K30 footage is encoded in a High@5.1 profile at 42Mbps, while the 4K60 footage is encoded at High@5.2 at a dazzling 120Mbps which is actually the limit of the Snapdragon 845’s video encoder. Here the sample video of 1m29s length came in at a hefty 1.24GB. While I applaud OnePlus for the high quality encode settings, the fact that the device lacks HEVC encoding options means that you’ll have to really be careful in terms of storage management when using 4K60 footage.
Audio recording in the video was very good.
Speaker Evaluation
I’ve first introduced speaker evaluation back in our Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S review a couple of weeks ago and we’re going to apply the same methodology to the OnePlus 6.
We’re using a calibrated flat response measurement microphone for the measurements and are using REW as the supporting software suite.
For speaker loudness measurements, we’re using a pink noise source, with the measurement microphone at head level 40cm away from the phone. We measure once the perceived volume when the phone is held in portrait one-handed mode, and once while holding the phone in landscape mode with both hands, cupping the sides.
One-handed and in portrait mode, the phone gets reasonably loud at up to 77.6dB(A). Holding the phone two-handed and cupping it however results in redirecting a lot of the sound towards the listener again, attaining a very loud 86.3db(A). In an optimally designed phone, we actually don’t want this much of a difference as it means a lot of the audio is firing away from the phone. The OnePlus 6 is one of the less optimal phones in terms of its speaker design as the sound pressure is very directional and bottom-firing out of its main and only speaker. This means you’ll have to pay more attention on how you hold the phone as it can make a large difference to volume and audio quality, and also it’s very easy to muffle the sound when the speaker holes are covered up.
We use a logarithmic measurement sweep within REW to measure the frequency response of the phone’s speaker. To get a more accurate comparison between phones, the volume is calibrated via pink noise to 75dB(A) and the measurement is done in landscape two-handed mode. The graph is represented with a psychoacoustic smoothing filter for better representation.
Unfortunately the OnePlus 6’s frequency response represents what we can also clearly hear when playing back media: It lacks depth as well as clarity. In the low frequency and lower mid-ranges ranges the OP6 fared among the worst, and this results in a very hollow-ish sound.
The OP6 is actually the loudest in the mid-ranges in its sound profile.
While a lot of mobile phones have an evident peak in the treble frequencies, the OP6 actually remains quite flat, which will affect sounds such as ringtones and represent them quieter than other phones.
Finally, the OP6 also doesn’t fare well in the high frequencies and has a very steep drop-off after 12KHz. Here it’ll depend on the user’s age and his sound profile, but most will still be able to hear these frequencies and interpret them as the “brilliance” in music.
Overall, the OP6’s speaker is average at best and can’t really compete with some other flagship phones.
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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.