OnePlus 3 Featuring 5.5-inch FHD Display, Snapdragon 820 SoC, 6GB RAM Launched at $400

Chinese startup OnePlus is only three years old, but you will be surprised with just how much importance and traction it receives from the Android community. Its well-built, high-end Android smartphones are priced fairly aggressively, allowing it to compete with the likes of Samsung, HTC, and LG among others in the cut-throat smartphone market. The company today unveiled its third flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 3. Priced at $399 (for the unlocked version), the OnePlus 3 sports a 5.5-inch AMOLED display (the company is reluctant on moving to QHD display, insisting that higher resolution will unnecessarily drain the battery faster). It is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoC, coupled with 6GB of RAM, a 16-megapixel rear camera with OIS, an 8-megapixel front-facing shooter, a fingerprint scanner, and 64GB of built-in storage. The dual-SIM capable smartphone houses a 3,000mAh battery, which the company says can go from 0 to 60 percent in just 30 minutes. In its review (the media received the device a week ahead of the launch), CNET finds the OnePlus 3 to be an "excellent performer", and its nearly stock Android operating system a refreshing change. The publication concludes that at $400 price point, OnePlus 3 is a great purchase.

Comments

QHD

[mrchaotica]

the company is reluctant on moving to QHD display, insisting that higher resolution will only drain the battery faster

The voice of reason! Thank goodness some manufacturer is finally being sensible instead of blindly following the "more pixels = better" mantra even when the pixels are too small to see.

No SD slot?

[Anonymous Coward]

No SD Slot, No Sale. It's that simple.

Re:No SD slot?

[CastrTroy]

I'm kind of with you. I'm not sure what the reason is for not including an SD card slot. 64 GB is probably big enough that I wouldn't need one, but it would also be tempting to spend $20 and get another 64 GB of storage. I'm sure that if the phone had something like 512GB of storage that I wouldn't feel the need for it, and any complaints would be unfounded, but it's almost the principle of the matter. Why wouldn't you take minimal steps to have expandable storage on a phone.

Re:What's the deal with wireless charging..

[Yvan256]

"Wireless charging", i.e. charging mats equals wasted energy. Energy that's still being produced by oil and coal in a lot of countries, including the U.S.A.

On the other hand, a standard "contacts at the bottom" specification is an excellent idea. I wouldn't call it "wireless" however, because of the whole "wireless charging mats" trend right now. What we need is to get all phone manufacturers on the idea, And Europe could probably push them enough to make it happen. It would need to be mandated on both phones and pads of varying thicknesses and width, but surely that's an idea that all companies could work with.

Is this what they've determined we want?

[CastrTroy]

Do we really need 6 GB of RAM on a phone? Until Android gets something like Continuum on Windows phone, where you can dock the phone and use it like a desktop, there seems little reason to have that much RAM. I guess they've just run out of things to upgrade to justify the high price. Personally, I won't spend much more than $200 on a phone at this point. Things are changing too fast on the software side, and updates to operating systems are often not available. You basically have to get a new phone every year or two to be guaranteed having the latest OS, and spending $400+ on a new phone every year or two is a little rich for my tastes.

Re:Is this what they've determined we want?

[amicusNYCL]

I guess they've just run out of things to upgrade to justify the high price.

It's a low price, actually. You own the phone, you are buying it outright, you are not renting it from your carrier and paying monthly. An unlocked Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, for example, costs $790. That's what the Oneplus Three competes against, so it's $400 versus $790. I own my Oneplus outright, I don't rent it from my carrier, so my cell phone bill is lower. You're still paying for your phone, just not all at once. If you cancel your contract early you'll notice that your carrier bills you for the remainder of the phone price.

spending $400+ on a new phone every year or two is a little rich for my tastes.

Yeah, I thought that paying $400 for my Oneplus One 2 years ago was a little much, but it's the best phone I've ever owned. It has great hardware, and the OS has received regular updates. In fact, the reason why I don't feel the need to upgrade to the Oneplus Three is because my phone still works fine. And, in those 2 years, my cell phone bill has been less every month because my carrier didn't subsidize my phone. It also didn't come pre-loaded with a bunch of crap software, the only thing on it was the OS with the default apps.

A top of the line phone, unlocked, which you own, with no crap on it, which you can move between carriers (or even use 2 carriers at the same time if you need to), for half the price of the competing phones. That's what you're getting, but if that's not what you're looking for then feel free to continue renting.

Re:What's the deal with wireless charging..

[losfromla]

They pushed through standardization on micro-usb, so yes, why not? Governments are good for lots of standardization type directives. Only morons think that government can't get anything right.