Cue in the Star Wars Imperial March theme, because the flagship killer is back. OnePlus had hit the stratosphere with their OnePlus 3 and 3T, getting that perfect balance between price and power. Firmly putting the smartphone company on the map, proving that it could be a serious contender. Now that the OnePlus 5 is out, is it worthy of being called a Flagship Killer or is it just settling?
Design
Before the launch, the OnePlus 5 teased social media with its dual camera, that looked very similar to another popular smartphone. We'll give you a hint, it rhymes with Shmapple WhyPhone 7 Flus. From the camera array right down to the antenna lines, the teaser image caused quite the stir. In reality, though, the OnePlus 5 does bear a small resemblance to the 7 Plus, but just the back panel around the dual camera array with the circular flash.
The front looks almost exactly like the OnePlus 3T, with the same colour AMOLED panel and the same placement of the fingerprint sensor. The bezels around the crisp 5.5-inch display are decent. The back panel has a slight 7 plus look, but the similarities end as the sides are not rounded like Apple's device. Instead, the sides have a sort of straight edge to it. The build quality is fantastic as to be expected with a nice anodised aluminium back and beautiful Gorilla Glass 5 out front, it screams premium. The design of the phone works, and while it may not make your eyebrows climb in happiness, the price certainly has and so have the specs.
The Phone
Packing the latest Octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor the OnePlus 5 is blazing fast and comes in two flavours. A 64 GB of storage with 6 GB of RAM or a whopping desktop level 8 GB of RAM with 128 GB of storage. The screen is a 5.5 inch AMOLED display at FullHD 1080p, which is a great choice always, but packing so much RAM, OnePlus 5 could have gotten away with a 4K display. Would have really cemented that flagship killer brand value. Though 1080p means that the phone just flies through every task or game you throw at it.
The OnePlus 5 runs Android Nougat 7.1.1 with its own overlay, Oxygen OS. No complaints on the software front, as the OS works perfectly and it's quite true to the stock Android. While adding a nifty shortcut shelf and you can draw out shortcuts to launch apps.
The Camera's
Jumping on the Dual Camera bandwagon, the OnePlus 5 sports a 1/2.8" sensor size, 1.12 µm @ 16MP, f/1.7, 24mm and a 1/2.8" sensor size, 1.0 µm @ 20MP, f/2.6, 36mm lens with phase detection autofocus and 1.6x optical zoom with a dual-LED flash. The same 16MP camera out back is present on the front too. The camera app does show a 2X when the secondary camera is activated but in reality, it's just a 1.6x as discovered by the folks at PocketNow. Confirmed by Carl Pei, the CEO of OnePlus in a tweet, "Optical zoom is at 1.6x, the remaining 0.4x is realised through SmartCapture multi-frame technology." So there are a bunch of powerful algorithms at work with the OnePlus 5's camera. As it does have the megapixel numbers as compared to its rivals.
The numbers look great and pictures look fantastic, taken from both cameras. The high megapixel count results in a lot more detail being captured. Which also aids in a better zoom since there are more pixels to play around with. There is no optical image stabilisation which made the OnePlus 3 camera fantastic. The 16MP selfie shooter is superb too, making for some really good selfies. The cameras are capable especially in daylight and well-lit areas, and they do passably well in low light too. While it does not reach the levels of the Google Pixel, the cameras are superb on the OnePlus 5.
Battery
With Dash Charge, the 3300 mAh battery took max 25 minutes to get to a 100% charge. The battery life is much better this time around, with heavy gaming, we were able to drop the battery to 3 hours. After a full day's use, we were at 40% in the night.
Should you get it?
The OnePlus 5 is available at a slightly higher price than the OnePlus 3T, at Rs. 32999 for the 6GB and Rs. 37,999 for the 8GB variant in midnight black. Personally, we are in love with the 8GB version for obvious reasons. As a whole, while the OnePlus 5 is just a small step from the defining 3, it is one of the best phones in the market right now, beating even some of the more expensive flagships in the specs race. While it does cost a bit more, you are still getting your money's worth.
Design
Before the launch, the OnePlus 5 teased social media with its dual camera, that looked very similar to another popular smartphone. We'll give you a hint, it rhymes with Shmapple WhyPhone 7 Flus. From the camera array right down to the antenna lines, the teaser image caused quite the stir. In reality, though, the OnePlus 5 does bear a small resemblance to the 7 Plus, but just the back panel around the dual camera array with the circular flash.
The front looks almost exactly like the OnePlus 3T, with the same colour AMOLED panel and the same placement of the fingerprint sensor. The bezels around the crisp 5.5-inch display are decent. The back panel has a slight 7 plus look, but the similarities end as the sides are not rounded like Apple's device. Instead, the sides have a sort of straight edge to it. The build quality is fantastic as to be expected with a nice anodised aluminium back and beautiful Gorilla Glass 5 out front, it screams premium. The design of the phone works, and while it may not make your eyebrows climb in happiness, the price certainly has and so have the specs.
The Phone
Packing the latest Octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor the OnePlus 5 is blazing fast and comes in two flavours. A 64 GB of storage with 6 GB of RAM or a whopping desktop level 8 GB of RAM with 128 GB of storage. The screen is a 5.5 inch AMOLED display at FullHD 1080p, which is a great choice always, but packing so much RAM, OnePlus 5 could have gotten away with a 4K display. Would have really cemented that flagship killer brand value. Though 1080p means that the phone just flies through every task or game you throw at it.
The OnePlus 5 runs Android Nougat 7.1.1 with its own overlay, Oxygen OS. No complaints on the software front, as the OS works perfectly and it's quite true to the stock Android. While adding a nifty shortcut shelf and you can draw out shortcuts to launch apps.
The Camera's
Jumping on the Dual Camera bandwagon, the OnePlus 5 sports a 1/2.8" sensor size, 1.12 µm @ 16MP, f/1.7, 24mm and a 1/2.8" sensor size, 1.0 µm @ 20MP, f/2.6, 36mm lens with phase detection autofocus and 1.6x optical zoom with a dual-LED flash. The same 16MP camera out back is present on the front too. The camera app does show a 2X when the secondary camera is activated but in reality, it's just a 1.6x as discovered by the folks at PocketNow. Confirmed by Carl Pei, the CEO of OnePlus in a tweet, "Optical zoom is at 1.6x, the remaining 0.4x is realised through SmartCapture multi-frame technology." So there are a bunch of powerful algorithms at work with the OnePlus 5's camera. As it does have the megapixel numbers as compared to its rivals.
The numbers look great and pictures look fantastic, taken from both cameras. The high megapixel count results in a lot more detail being captured. Which also aids in a better zoom since there are more pixels to play around with. There is no optical image stabilisation which made the OnePlus 3 camera fantastic. The 16MP selfie shooter is superb too, making for some really good selfies. The cameras are capable especially in daylight and well-lit areas, and they do passably well in low light too. While it does not reach the levels of the Google Pixel, the cameras are superb on the OnePlus 5.
Battery
With Dash Charge, the 3300 mAh battery took max 25 minutes to get to a 100% charge. The battery life is much better this time around, with heavy gaming, we were able to drop the battery to 3 hours. After a full day's use, we were at 40% in the night.
Should you get it?
The OnePlus 5 is available at a slightly higher price than the OnePlus 3T, at Rs. 32999 for the 6GB and Rs. 37,999 for the 8GB variant in midnight black. Personally, we are in love with the 8GB version for obvious reasons. As a whole, while the OnePlus 5 is just a small step from the defining 3, it is one of the best phones in the market right now, beating even some of the more expensive flagships in the specs race. While it does cost a bit more, you are still getting your money's worth.
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