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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tipoo - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Was that meant as a reply to me? I know that, the N5 was a great example of this. Though the 6 is going back up to stupid pricing.tipoo - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Yes the authors "first" comment was wrong, but I meant about the "understand the market" bit, I'm guessing he means subsidized prices.Arbie - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
A phablet with no microSD? These larger phones (and of course tablets) are what benefit from that the most, in their role as media players. I wouldn't even consider the OPO.coldpower27 - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
64GB is already sufficiently large that a microSD isn't totally necessary. Less and less Android phones have this feature now. That has been the general trend now. Google is moving away from it with the Nexus 5/6/9, Apple never has had it in it's products.There are still some modern products that have it. Samsung GS5, Note 4, HTC One M8, LG G3.
cjs150 - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
The idea that 64 G is enough is hilarious - this is a phone begging to be used as a media device whilst travelling. The reason for removing the microSD is a function of price. Phone/Tablet manufacturers massively overcharge for adding extra storage. It is also a function of the same manufacturers employing designers who, to put it simply, need to get out into the sunshine a bit more. Not everywhere has good access to the cloud, in fact huge chunks of the first world has poor or no access - and that is before you get started on the data cap that no doubt is written into your phone contractChaser - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
What's hilarious is are people that believe 5" phone displays should be loaded up with movies and then used as miniature Imax viewers. It's a phone. It doesn't need 80 HD movies with Dolby Digital 7.1.jabber - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Yeah if you are going on vacation, enjoy the vacation. Don't spend it watching crappy movies the whole time. You really don't need to carry masses of video and audio around.oliwek - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Those recent phones have (micro)-USB OTG connectors. So it's possible to stock movies and music on USB thumb drives... I'd prefer to get the choice, though.oliwek - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
LG G2 had no SD card slot, G3 has got one. Same evolution for the HTC One. And Samsung flagships always had SD card slots. So this evolution is not so widespread (if you except Nexus models, and Apple tactics to let the customer pay more and more for enough NAND)..
slfisher - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
I held off from getting a OnePlus for that reason for quite a while -- as well as the fact that it doesn't have a removable battery. I was really holding out for either a Google Play edition of the S5, or Lollipop on my existing S3. Since neither one was forthcoming, I went for the OnePlus because of the bare metal and the 64GB.