OnePlus One review

• OnePlus 2 vs OnePlus One
Much of my early time with the OnePlus One was spent warily turning it around in my hands, like some kind of mysterious artefact of unknown origin, not quite ready to believe what was being promised of it. There has to be some compromise here, right?
Well, yes there is. In fact, there are several. But it's staggering how small they seem when weighed against that double-take-inducing price tag.
An issue to get out of the way early on is the availability of this handset. OnePlus started out with a slightly strange invite-only system, limiting the number of people who can order a handset.
It was so the startup firm can keep on top of production, but meant you had to hunt around for an invite - or try your luck with a 24 hour pre-order session the firm appears to be doing every now and then.
However since its launch the OnePlus One is now far more easy to get hold of, with the rather convoluted invite system moving over to the new OnePlus 2.
OnePlus will only ship the One to 16 countries, so if you're not in one of the following you're pretty much out of luck. Those countries are; Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Usually when a cheap smartphone boasts specifications that bloody the noses of the big boys, it's the design that suffers. It's far harder to make a solid, stylish, and hard-wearing mobile device than it is to throw in the latest off-the-shelf chip from Qualcomm.



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However the OnePlus One is a pleasure to hold and to use. Okay, so it lacks the HTC One M9's gorgeous metallic sheen, and you won't turn any heads when you take it out of your pocket like you would with a flashy iPhone 6 Plus. But show me the phone that does.
The OnePlus One nevertheless feels great in the hand. It's primarily made up of a quality matte plastic shell that extends around the back and sides of the device. This isn't a unibody construction, and this rear panel can be removed for customisation purposes, but it's firmly fixed in place with minimal creaking or flexing.
There's a metal-effect plastic rim that separates this rear cover from the glass front, which cheapens the effect ever-so-slightly, but it's thin and unadorned. It does mean that the aforementioned glass frontage appears to stand out rather than melding into the body of the phone, but it's not an unpleasant effect.



All in all, it looks and feels like something of a cross between the Nexus 5 and the Nokia Lumia 1520.
The OnePlus One is not a particularly slim or light device, but then nor is it an absolute brick. At 152.9 x 75.9 x 8.9mm, its dimensions make it only slightly larger than the LG G4 and Sony Xperia Z3, the latter of which has a smaller 5.2-inch screen. What's more, the OnePlus One is three grams lighter than the Sony at 160g.
Of course, this is still a monster of a phone when you compare it to older or smaller devices. I always thought of my trusty old HTC One X as a bit of a beast, but the 4.7-inch phone feels positively dainty next to the OnePlus One. Meanwhile my iPhone 5S looked like a (rich) child's toy when held next to it.



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