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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ttremeth - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Agreed.grayson_carr - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
I owned one for a while and this comment is truth.DanD85 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Definitely not agree! As someone who had purchased 3 of OPO phone, I can tell you that all the phones I had purchased were & still are excellent. If you are calling yourself a techie than with this complaining act of yours, you are not deserve to call yourself that. I myself also received a DOA charger from OnePlus and the feedback from them has been great. I received a replacement unit not so long after I filed my report with them. No complaint from me so far. Haters like you go around the web and spreading bad rep about OPO and I would recommend those who still on the fend buy one and try for yourself. You won't find a better deal anywhere else period! The price to pay for those living in the USA is actually even lower than China! Which phone you can buy now can have that?augiem - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Why is there always someone out there who tries to make things personal? You have no right to tell me what I deserve to call myself or not and have no right or reason to label me as anything. I have done the research and there are _many_ others who would agree with me. Read the OPO forums. I will not defend myself to you. God! EVERY single time. You people need to get a life and stop making tech your own personal religious war.srkelley - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
*claps*Harry_Wild - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
I just got done reading the feedback on OnePlus.net forum and cancel my order too. To much of a hassle if something happens to go wrong with the One!I rather spend a little more and have good customer service!
K_Space - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
I do not honestly know if Oneplus originally intended this a phone to the mass market; even though for all intends and purposes it is now. The clue should be the invite system.I propose this was originally aimed as a 1st edition phone designed semi-exclusively for techies so that it irons out all the hardware, software buggy features. To this effect, the invite system would have worked pretty well with invites being sent out to developers, and android fans who not only are able to come to term with minor bugs but also tackle them in their quest to nourish their problem-solving addiction. It also gives OnePlus an accurate assessment of their customer care (or lack thereof). Unfortunately, the phone has become the victim of it's own popularity and when the phone landed with the non-intended target audience they rightfully complained about how unpolished it feels; the inviters should be a lot more cautious with their invitations. Joshua has done a splendid job reflecting his opinion regarding the suitability of the phone for the mass market, but if he received this as a developer phone I am certain he'd be extremely pleased.
If I was a phone producer; this is probably what I'd have done. Indeed all tech companies do this with their pre-alpha or alpha builds but to a much narrower base. Think Glass or Project Ara. OP just went global and now they are reaping their harvest (both good and bad fruits). I'm sure the Oneplus Two will be a far more polished and probably more expensive phone.
mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
"Even people who are extremely happy with the phone consistently live with problems always expecting them to be fixed in the next patch"No problem, im happy, not waiting a fix. No crashing or so. Works perfectly. Yellow banding issue? yes, and that cannot be fixed (it is in hardware). I could have sent the phone back and got mobey back. But the yellow gloe can be hide with an app changing the colour hue of that area. So it doesnt bother me because i cannot see it at all. I only know it is there, and that bothers me, lol. For me this is the best phone i have had. I could buy another if i needed. I knew that the screen may have a yellow bottom before i bought this and i decided to keep this, because it was only visible in certain situations and i was able to fix it with an app though. Disappointed? Sure. Customer support prooably sucks - althought i got an answer on the next day, but i know many complains about it.
Battery is great. No signal lost. No crashing apps (i do have "only" paid apps, so i dont know if free apps have serious bugs.) No touchscreen lockups. Earpiece failures?? What kind? First time i hear about this.
Your reply was basicly just an assumption based on opinions from people who have had problems. How about making the same kind of assumption based on opinions from people who dont have problem? Or better, bash the phone when you actually have one to bash.
Could you show me the extremely buggy software topic? Im running official 44s without any problems at all.
johnny_boy - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I just picked up an Honor 6 for nearly 100 euros cheaper (!) than the OnePlus One goes for on Amazon. (The European version of the Honor 6 is only available from Amazon.) Given the price difference, the more preferable screen size on the Honor 6, the better CPU performance of the Honor 6 and its expandable memory, seems like a no-brainer to me. If I were to get a Chinese smartphone, it wouldn't be the OnePlus One. (Also, what's up with the stupid sexist promo they had and the invite-only way to buy the thing?)ttremeth - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
I have one and was a little naive caught up in overwhelming positive reviews. Yes, head over to the OPO forums where people beg for invites. I bought one from China (identical except some LTE frequencies) and then got one of these elusive invites a few weeks later. Someone got very upset that they did not get my invite. It is absurd behaviour for adults begging and being so “nice” to get someone to give them an invite to buy the phone.Then if you read through their forums you will see many complaints of non-existent customer service and RMAs taking months as well as some hideous problems. Of course you need to weigh people’s comments against common sense but the Flagship killer is definitely not what it claims to be. However, I do like the phone personally.