The OnePlus One Review
by Joshua Ho on November 19, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
- OnePlus
WiFi
On the OnePlus One, it's quite surprising to see the retention of 802.11ac WiFi as such features are often the first to be cut to reduce the price of a product. In the case of the OnePlus One, we see Qualcomm Atheros' WCN3680 solution, which is a single spatial stream for a maximum physical link rate of 433 Mbps. While the physical link rate is one thing, practical bandwidth and performance is another. In order to test this, we use iperf on Android with Asus' RT-AC68U for maximum perfomance in this area.
In this test, I saw that the OnePlus One noticeably out-performed the rest of the single stream competition, but I suspect that there are some irregularities here as iperf would report bandwidth above 433 Mbps in certain cases. Subjectively, there are no real issues with WiFi performance and one should have little issue with this on the OnePlus One.
GNSS
As one might have guessed, the OnePlus One leverages the on-die modem for GNSS. This means that one can expect IZat (GPSOne) gen 8B. In general, I haven't found any issues with GPS on this device. With a cold lock (airplane mode on, no assistance data) I found that it took around 50 seconds to first acquire position, then around another 30 seconds to get high accuracy.
Misc
The haptic feedback on the OnePlus One is noticeably different from every other device I've used, with much more noise than vibration. The same TI BQ27541 fuel gauge is shared with the Oppo Find 7A, as is the TI BQ24196 charger chip. Reception, at least for T-Mobile US' band 4/AWS LTE is noticeably worse than most devices that I've tried. The dual speakers are loud and the quality is relatively good, but no better than what one might find on the iPhone 6.
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melgross - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I know this may seem to be a very minor issue and nitpicking, but I would just like to comment that the thinness of the oleophobic coating, if there is one, would have no effect on the feel of the screen. You interact with the surface of the coating, not the thickness. It might lead to a shorter effective life for the coating, but not a difference in swiping feel.I bothers me, because this is something that a little bit of thought would have revealed as being illogical. And if writers write things that are illogical in one part of the article, where else will they do that where we won't notice it, and come to a wrong conclusion because of it?
cr0wb4r - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I think two options in CM11S will make all the nit picks worthwhile: Profiles and double tap to wake.Having a Home and Work profile allows me to turn off/on lock screen. Huge
Double tap to wake and see notifications and then double tap status bar area to go back to sleep. Again Huge.
Just my 2 cents on the plethora of CM11S options
cr0wb4r - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Sorry, forgot to mention that Profiles make it AUTOMATIC to turn on/off lock screen. I realize this is obvious to most...phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Profiles have been available in Android ROMs for at least a year now, if not longer. It's one of the first things I turn off when flashing an AOSP-based ROM on my phone.DT2W has been available in Android ROMs within a month or so of LG releasing their sources, as they were the first ones to enable it (works wonderfully with the LG G2 where the power button is on the back).
IOW, neither of these features are exclusive to CM 11S, or even CM, or even just AOSP.
toyotabedzrock - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I have read that the updated version of Chrome running on lollipop on the nexus 5 sees a rather large bump in the Octane benchmark.Allan_Hundeboll - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I was beginning to think this site would never review the OPO, much appreciated.But:
Oneplus One has strong reception! (But lacks LTE 800Mhz band)
And people should know that a 5.5" phablet is big, so how can the size be a problem?
Maybe the author also think the iphone 6+ is just too big? Let customers decide what screen size he/she wants, please.
Joshua Ho seem to forget this phone wasn't made for average joes! CM is all about customization so how can too many options be a problem? Please understand a lot of geeks chose android because we appreciate the almost endless possibilities and CM takes this further than google's stock android.
So this phablet is perfect for XDA members NOT for someone like my mother.
mfmx - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Are you sure your mother wouldn't like it? My grandmother that is 96 years old thinks 5,5" is the perfect size for her. Also my mother that has a 5,3" phone doesn't want a smaller device.Munna2002 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
My mother and grand aunt also like the size of the OPO.grayson_carr - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
The display calibration results are perplexing to me. I know when the phone was first released, it was using a calibration profile created by then CyanogenMod employee François Simond (supercurio), who has also worked with Anandtech on reviews in the past. It didn't surprise me that the screen was very accurate then. But then a couple months ago, OnePlus released an update that did away with supercurio's calibration profile (and let supercurio go / didn't renew his contract) because too many people were complaining that the screen looked too yellow (warm), as 6500K often does to the untrained eye. The update shifted the white point drastically up to the 8000K range (super cold and blue looking) and presumably made colors less accurate. I sold the device a short time later due to annoying bugs, but now I'm confused by these results. What version of CM11S was this phone running as tested? Did you test an old version of the software or did they reinstate the proper calibration profile in a recent update? This review could mislead some people hoping for a properly calibrated screen if you did indeed test the One with the older software.techcrazy - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Where is Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact review?