What does it mean to use a flagship smartphone in 2015? It likely means that you’re using a phone with a great display, fast performance, good battery life, good build quality, and a great camera. If I’m being honest, I have to say that the OnePlus 2 doesn’t hit all of those marks, but it hits most of them and does so at a price that’s just over half that of a comparable iPhone. It’s not a flagship killer by any means – this year or next – but it’s a really solid smartphone that does most everything you need it to do really well. It’s easily the best deal on the market right now if you want a high-end smartphone.
AndroidCentral has another review of the OnePlus 2. Looks like a great phone for the price, but with some small issues.
Looks like a great phone, plain and simple.
Pretty much. I’m not sure I like having a physical home button, I find that those tend to get in the way, but other than that it’s got everything I could need. Actually, I could do with lower specs just fine, I don’t need 4GB RAM or such a high-end SoC, but I guess those don’t hurt, either.
Unlike the reviewer, I have zero issues with the lack of NFC as I still haven’t found any use for it with my current phone.
I find it quite convenient for initiating Bluetooth transfers.
You choose the file/contact/event/whatever you want to share, use “Share via NFC”, put the phones together and that’s all you have to do.
The devices then use NFC to negoiate the Bluetooth pairing and use that for the actual transfer.
But I agree in general, not having NFC wouldn’t be a problem, just less convenient
Not having NFC is a crime against future progress. It should be as standard as a camera or battery. But as this phone won’t really sell that well, its omission isn’t that bad. We really, really need to get NFC on all phones to allow the really good uses to have a good install base for their products and services.
Wouldn’t you be better off buying last years model? It has almost the same features and is 100 USD cheaper for the 64GB model?
And how many flagships this year have good battery life? And by that, I mean one that can easily last all day with moderate to semi-heavy use? I know the S6 ain’t on that list. I doubt the M9 and Note 5 are either.
Edited 2015-08-19 01:14 UTC
Most flagship phones have gone overboard with resolution so even though they use very energy efficient components internally you will waste all your battery on the CPU/GPU/MEM and screen to push all those pixels. My wife has a Nokia 1520 from 1.5 year ago which has a huge 6″ screen but also a big battery and “only” a Full HD screen (similar to the Moto X, One Plus One, etc). These phones tend to get battery life that might get you through a weekend without charging.
That’s one of those things that really bothers me about the current crop of phones: you need some really effing good eyes to be able to tell the difference between 1080p and anything higher than that at 6″ or less, so it really brings absolutely nothing useful to the table. Better battery-life, on the other hand? I certainly don’t know of anyone who would complain about it!
On the other hand, I’m pretty happy that Chinaman-phones are stepping in to fills this gap. They can be just as good materials- and buildswise as phones from the big names, sport perfectly good specs, but cost only a fraction of the big names’ phones and are thus much more accessible to people.
Heh, I have a 1080p and a 1440p screen sitting next to eachother and decided to test your theory. Basically, the difference is in very small text, which is clearly less strainy on the eye on the 1440p. For images and normal text, I see basically no difference, but there’s clearly an advantage if you need to read tiny text at length (but hey, why not just pinch-zoom instead)
Thanks for testing!
“if you need to read tiny text at length” …I would just switch to reading mode and everything becomes nice and big and comfortable for your eyes and…
Also, who NEEDS to read tiny text at length on a phone screen anyway? Just use a tablet/laptop for that!
Of course 1440p is better than 1080p, but not in any significant way that anyone would benefit from. But at the same time the cost of it is hurting so many people all the time in wasted performance and batterylife
By no means will I invest so much money in something with a crapware version of Android from a shop with such small resources for software development.
It appears to me that outside of the Nexus range, the One Plus One has the most supported from 3rd party ROMs. And OP’s customer-base seems to be mostly power-users, who would be game to try 3rd party ROMs.
So while the ‘original’ OS may not be very good, it shouldn’t bother their target-base as long as they open up the bootloader, and allow root access on the One Plus Two.
Edited 2015-08-20 05:26 UTC
That is wrong on so many levels!
There are so many 3rd party ROMS because the ‘original’ OS is not good, as you wrote yourself! Basically, OnePlus and Oppo are basically incompetent are not able to come with a decent OS (based on Android) for their phones. Also their OS based on Android contains really bad quality drivers (for camera, bluetooth, etc.). These drivers (that are binary blobs) do not come with Android and that means that if they are of bad quality directly from the phone manufacturer then no 3rd party OS (like Cyanogen) will be able to fix that. If one goes on forums of Oppo and OnePlus will see that if for example the video quality is bad in the original OS from Oppo/OnePLus then all the third party OS will have exact the same problem! I wish good luck to you waiting that a 3rd party will fix the bugs in camera drivers from OnePlus!
Although the article devotes two entire paragraphs to the question of overheating, it is very disappointing that they provide no numbers.
German website golem.de ran benchmarks in cold and warm state.
After 15 minutes of gaming, Geekbench single-core score dropped from 1196 to 746 points, while multi-core dropped from 4518 to 2695 points.
http://www.golem.de/news/oneplus-two-im-test-zwei-ist-besser-als-ei…
OnePlus is just a marketing thing. OnePlus is basically Oppo phone which has been promoted previously here (because some one got one for free with some string attached)!
Oppo is the owner of OnePlus and Oppo starts to shift some of its phone production to OnePlus! Also, the design of Oppo phones and OnePlus phones are pretty similar! Here is more info about this: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Is-OnePlus-a-wholly-owned-subsidiary…
The specs of OnePLus do not look nice even on paper!
Whoe buys today a flagship killer smartphone without wireless charging and NFC?
Also, the quality of the camera drivers and the software are really bad but of course OnePlus has an explanation for it!
Even Forbes says to move on..
Don’t believe the hype, the OnePlus 2 is no ‘flagship killer’
http://fortune.com/2015/08/19/oneplus-2review/
Edited 2015-08-19 19:10 UTC
I would.
I would NOT!
Edited 2015-08-20 17:53 UTC