The OnePlus One Review
by Joshua Ho on November 19, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
- OnePlus
Battery Life
At this point, battery life is one of the number one priorities for a phone. While in 2013 our primary tests consisted of the web browsing test and video playback tests, we've expanded our suite to include Basemark OS II and GFXBench to simulate intensive general usage and gaming, respectively. For all of our tests in which the display is on, we calibrate the brightness of full white to be 200 nits in order to standardize and attempt to control for extraneous variables as much as possible. While this may seem arbitrary, it's important to do so to draw real conclusions about which phone has better battery life. 200 nits on a phone can be as low as 50% and as high as 90%, so setting a standardized brightness percentage would not be an effective method of controlling for display brightness. With that in mind, let's get to the battery life tests.
Here, we see that the OnePlus One takes the number three spot for battery life amongst phones and phablets. This is definitely a great result to start with, and is a solid 20% higher than the One (M8). However, the Huawei Ascend Mate 2 continues to hold its position with a long lead over just about anything else available in the market today.
We can see a similar story in LTE web browsing battery life. However, the OnePlus One manages to close up the lead that the Ascend Mate 2 holds in WiFi browsing. It's likely that the 28nm LP process and lack of envelope tracker is responsible for closing the gap in this regard. It's interesting to see how the iPhone 6 Plus trails behind the OnePlus One here, but it's likely that this difference is due to the fact that the iPhone 6 Plus has an off-die modem compared to the OnePlus One's on-die modem.
White battery life tends to fall towards the bottom here, we can see that the reality is that the OnePlus One performs quite well, which indicates that there's relatively little throttling to speak of and that the OnePlus One is simply doing well by sustaining high levels of performance.
We see the same story in the GFXBench rundown. The OnePlus One manages to set a new record for final run FPS among phones and phablets, although battery life is near the bottom of the pack. It seems that if there's any one reason for the escalating display size wars, it is to increase battery life. While by no means a clear order, we can see that the larger battery more than compensates for the larger display of the OnePlus One. This makes sense, as a phone should have a fixed size circuit board. Therefore, by increasing display size the circuit boards become smaller relative to the rest of the phone, and all of the area opened up by increasing the size of the phone can be taken up by the battery. Overall, the OnePlus One is almost as good as it gets for battery life in a phone, with excellent sustained performance under load.
Charge Time
To really have a holistic understanding of battery life, we must also take a look at charge time. While battery life can be the only determinant of mobility, in cases where usage is heavy enough that the battery or multiple batteries have to be charged, charge time can become incredibly important. To this end, OnePlus includes a 5V, 2.1A charger in the box to quickly charge the rather large 11.78 WHr battery.
Somewhat surprisingly, the OnePlus One does a great job in this test, coming quite close to other devices with QC 2.0 fast chargers like the Galaxy Note 4 which is definitely good to see. Overall, this makes the OnePlus One one of the best phablets on the market for battery life.
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AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
How bout a Samsung Alpha review? The >5" space doesn't suit me.MDX - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
So, in summary, you liked the phone but cyanogen had too many options? I'm pretty sure this phone is targeting those who enjoy the additional privacy and options provided by Cyanogen. Anandtech as a whole seems to conveniently ignore the privacy issue as a whole (very disappointing, btw) but to do that for this review is to completely ignore one of the main reasons why this phone has become so popular. Yes, one can put cyanogenmod on most any android device, but not everyone has the will or the know-how to do so.madwolfa - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
"..the first to kill the concept of a 650 USD"... but what about Nexus??Narg - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
They should have used Windows Phone for the OS, then it would have been 100% polished and virus free...Rashkae - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
So, why not review the Sony Z3 as well?Chostakovitch - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Here si an invite which have 12 hours left: GLVT-FMIA-VRIY-JQHG.I am a happy customer of this product since 3 weeks. I planned to buy the Nexus 6 but changed my mind because the hefty price tag.
I am an AnandTech reader since the 440BX days.
I don't agree reviewer point about software. For example, I am so happy to be able to block by default all the intrusive apps request to personal stuff as localization, address book, journal logs, photos and so on. CyanogenMod is a must.
It is sad that OnePlus plan to use their colorOS for their next flagship killer.
Finally, this is true that the device height is a bit too big for me but since it is a bit less than iPhone 6 plus, this is acceptable. Anyways, I bet everyone will follow the band wagon and change their small iPhone 4/5 for phablet within the next two years.
nasqb112 - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
I should have posted this earlier, but I was able to purchase the 1+1shortly after it was released. After having used it for a while, I can confidently say this is one of the best phones I have ever used. It feels like a very premium device and the grey, fine-sandpaper textured back does wonders for grip. At first I felt it was a little too big (I feel 4.7 - 5.0 is the sweet spot) but I quickly got used to it. The screen quality is great as well as the sound (obviously not as good as HTC One). As a fairly heavy user, the battery is up to task. It last all day and I come home with a solid amount of battery left (around 40%). To get an idea of my typical day: GPS high accuracy is always on and I use the phone for emails, texts, google maps/yelp, Uber/Lyft, watching movies/shows and reading kindle books during commute to and from work.In terms of the software, Cyanogen Mod is highly customizable and response time for launching apps and switching screens is fast. I have recently (over the past 2 weeks) had a couple of glitches but these were minimal such as the lock screen being unresponsive until I pressed the power button down again to wake it up.
I live in NYC and have used the phone on both T-Mo and AT&T. It was as simple as popping in a SIM card and the phone worked right away. I was impressed as I expected to have to switch up a lot of settings. Call quality is good, especially on AT&T. I wish there was a version of this phone that supported VZ bands!
If you have the opportunity to purchase this phone, I say pull the trigger! Paying $350 for 64gb is a great deal considering this is a premium device from a new company with great support. The forums are very active so you can get help quite quickly if you need it. As a guy who switches his phone around once per year (awesome corporate phone policy!), the 1+1 was awesome enough to keep me from switching to an iPhone 6+ as well as the Nexus 6 so it is a great device. I highly recommend it!
Dark._.Knight - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
PLEASE HELP ME!!!My phone One Plus One charge to 100% took time 5\6 hour. Why? First charge took8/9hours. Now 5/6 hours? It happen to all one plus one phone user?