The OnePlus One Review
by Joshua Ho on November 19, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
- OnePlus
Software
While software tends to be a bit of a side note in reviews, it really is a crucial part of the experience. Without a good UI, the entire experience can be ruined as a result of these issues. This leads us to CM11S, the first official UI released by Cyanogen. For the most part, this UI really is just a lightly re-touched version of what we see in Nexus devices, but with a large number of extra features. For example, we see a revamp of the quick settings menu, with horizontal quick settings in the notification drawer along with a large number of available quick settings tiles in the quick settings menu.
Of course, CM11S goes much deeper. There really is an immense amount of customization available to the end user, from a custom boot animation to new icons, fonts, wallpapers, sounds, and overall system UI themes. While Holo is the official AOSP UI, CM11S ships with Hexo which is largely similar to Holo, but with a strong emphasis on hexagons throughout the UI. Many of the modifications that one might be used to from a custom ROM are present here, such as the ability to dynamically change the battery icon in the status bar, the way that the clock is displayed, reception representation, gestures to turn on the flashlight or the display, re-mapping the rather dim capacitive buttons, enabling or disabling on screen buttons, permissions management, changing the size of a pattern unlock, changing the lock screen altogether, and similar customizations.
While one can spend their time defending choice for the sake of choice, I definitely question the value of all of these additions. While some will value the ability to deeply customize their OS, for anyone that is even remotely unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of CyanogenMod and Cyanogen they will find their experience to be deeply frustrating. While I've already detailed some of the usability issues present in the camera application, many of these features fundamentally don't make sense. The notification drawer's "quick access ribbon" out of the box is simply a row of icons that can have very little meaning at times. While one can guess that an airplane is for airplane mode and a flashlight is for the torch, a circular arrow is utterly ambiguous in nature. Given the quick access nature of this menu, one might guess that this is a rotation lock toggle but for one reason or another it's actually the auto-sync toggle.
These issues extend to the point of being outright frustrating for average users. While one might guess that setting up lockscreen protection through the security menu as with almost every other UI, CM11S places it in the lockscreen menu which definitely can make for some level of difficulty in adapting from other devices. Something as simple as the pattern lock becomes complicated as one is given an almost ridiculous amount of choice from a 3x3 to 6x6 pattern. While a 4x4 or 3x3 pattern makes sense, 5x5 or 6x6 is almost guaranteed to be wholly unnecessary for an OS that's supposed to target a large number of users that may or may not be accustomed to the Cyanogen UI experience.
Finally, it's hard to argue for extensive customization of most visual aspects, as it's really far too easy for themes to rapidly diverge from meshing with Google design lines quite rapidly. While I'm sure that there are people out there that will like whatever themes are available using the CM11 theme engine, it's really hard to argue that this is a good thing for cohesive experience. The sheer number of issues with the camera alone is enough to question whether this level of customization is worth dealing with the likelihood of buggy releases.
While there are a lot of issues with Cyanogen's approach of throwing every possible option to the user, to their credit a great deal of the experience does come out quite enjoyable once one has spent enough time actually figuring out what each option does. For example, while on most phones it's pretty easy to fill the status bar with an NFC indicator, WiFi, cellular reception icons, battery icons, battery percentage text, and the time, this can be avoided on the OnePlus One. Various elements can be removed if desired, and things like the privacy guard application allow for a great deal of fine-tuning to ensure that applications don't have more permissions than necessary, although this could cause unintended behavior in an application. In addition, the overall experience has been consistently smooth and performant, with no real lag. The real issue here is that CM11S has taken the kitchen-sink approach to UI design, to the detriment of the user.
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max1001 - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Totally agree, it's a good phone but def lack polish. I have been using one since launch.The most disappointing part was the camera because the hardware is class leading but the software is seriously holding it back.
Stochastic - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I just got my OnePlus One about a week ago. This is actually my first smartphone (yeah, I held out that long) so I have no real reference point to go by, although I have used iPhones, a 2013 Moto X, a Galaxy S5, and the LG G3 briefly. Since I’m not used to the smaller sized devices that were popular in 2007-2013, the OPO doesn’t feel gargantuan to me. In fact, after hearing so much about how massive the device is, I was a little surprised at how reasonably sized it is. I would say I have average sized hands and I can still use the device one-handed for some functions if I cradle it right, although obviously it’s far more ergonomic/efficient to use with two hands. Again, since this is my first smartphone, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest.Battery life is very good in my experience. Granted, I use airplane mode most of the time and have tweaked the auto brightness curve so that the display is very dim, but so far I’ve been reasonably impressed with how long it can last on a charge. To me this is more important than being able to use the phone one-handed.
The 5.5 inch display is well suited to web browsing and article reading, which are my primary uses for the device. To be honest I wouldn’t mind an even larger display—I’d like to try the Nexus 6 at some point. Reading this review I’m really surprised by the quality of the screen calibration. Subjectively, I can confirm that the display looks quite good, although I’d like my next device to have an OLED for inky blacks and lower power draw. The few videos I’ve watched so far looked about as good as they do on my Dell U2412M. At 401 PPI, the display appears laser sharp to me. Then again I don’t have 20/20 vision, so even a ~250 PPI display would probably appear sufficiently resolving to my eyes. To be honest, I’d trade resolution for even better battery life and performance in a heartbeat.
The bottom mounted speakers leave something to be desired, but I find that to be the case for all smartphones save perhaps the HTC One M8. If you care about sound quality you’ll use headphones. The OPO does a good job of driving my ATH-M50s (and hopefully the Fidelio X2s I have coming in), so it should work well as a DAP without the need to resort to a portable amp.
Regarding Cyanogenmod and the overall polish of the software: obviously this device isn’t going to be on par with iOS or Android Lollipop in that regard, but I haven’t encountered any show stopping bugs so far on the 44S firmware. I’ve also been reasonably happy with the touch sensitivity, although I can’t really assess this as I’m using a .24 mm Orzly screen protector. I look forward to the CM12 update that we should receive early next year and hope that polish will improve with time.
Stochastic - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I just read over my post and realized that I'm perhaps gushing a bit too much. So here are some gripes:The battery isn't user replaceable. Personally, I find this to be the OPO's biggest shortcoming.
As examined in detail in the review, the camera is decidedly lackluster. This doesn't personally bother me as I'll just use a DSLR if I really care about image quality, and the camera is still serviceable in a pinch, but digital shutterbugs should steer clear.
UI performance is overall very good in my opinion, but there still is some minor stuttering/hitching with certain apps. It's not a big deal but it's definitely not as smooth as iOS.
While the OPO doesn't have any deal-breaking issues unlike most Android phones (poor battery life, subpar display, limited storage capacity, middle-of-the-road performance, etc.), it also doesn't have too much to set it apart except for maybe the customizability offered by Cyanogenmod. This can easily be forgiven given the $350 price point, but I still envy the features found in the Moto X.
The OPO is only supported by GSM networks. Definitely a con.
Availability is still limited, and from what I've heard, customer support is pretty terrible. Caveat emptor. Going forward this needs to be OnePlus' top priority.
DanD85 - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Thanks for reviewing the OnePlus One! It's one of the best phone of this year, combine with the spectacular price and you have a clear winner.webdoctors - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
There's a MIUI ROM out for One Plus One. Could the reviewer please also try that? I've found MIUI to give a pretty polished experience. Sorry as I realize installing a custom ROM on a $300 phone shouldn't be necessary, but considering the great HW, seems a shame to be let down by CM...(but that same argument could be given for all the great Android phones crippled by crappy Android vs iOS)Munna2002 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I'm curious - how does one get this and are there reviews of MIUI doing a comparison with CyanogenMod?Midwayman - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Its a phone for enthusiasts it seems. Thing is all the options and development was done for people who are able to root and install a ROM on their own. No surprise that Cyanogen has some rough edges for a mass market.Bob Todd - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
After basically losing interest in this phone due to the incredibly slow market roll-out/invite process, I find it more interesting again now that the Nexus 5 is out of stock in every configuration. The Nexus 6 being so underwhelming in the review here is also helping.Shlong - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
You should also mention that it comes with an additional nano sim card tray so it'll fit both nano and micro sim. It's a very good phone and for the price it can't be beat (unlocked to boot) but the camera is just crap. Luckily, I have an iphone 6 plus as well but for those without an extra phone and love taking pictures, you will be disappointed. Everything else is excellent however.augiem - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I actually ordered one of these last week, but ended up cancelling the order. Go scour the OnePlus forums and you'll find there is an unusually high number of reports of extremely buggy software and hardware. One recent forum poll showed 25% of phones had problems. Even people who are extremely happy with the phone consistently live with problems always expecting them to be fixed in the next patch. This goes on for months and months and months. Some of the problems people have had are very serious such as earpiece failures, touch screen lockups, loss of LTE signal, random reboots, sudden data loss, battery drain, yellow banding on the screen, constant app crashes, etc. Die hard fans always blow these issues off. Their solution? Telling everyone to root their devices and load alternate roms or start running the dailies from Cyanogen. Okay... Sounds like a solution to me. To make matters worse, customer support is nonexistent at the company with many reports of receiving no response to support contact for a month or more. People have frequently been forced to file claims with PayPal to get their money back. None of this is mentioned in all the glowing reviews of this device around the web. Word of advice: DO YOUR RESEARCH before you jump in and buy this phone. Even for techies, the cost of ownership is very high in the time you'll likely have to invest to get the phone running properly.