Quick Look at the OnePlus X

I have never been a fan of OnePlus as a company. First of all, their marketing, and invitation system stinks of bovine manure. While technically useful in a variety of applications, it's still pretty revolting to be around it. Secondly, I don't think their phones are very interesting. Their past 2 “flagship killer” devices brought knives to a gunfight. A cheaper weapon of choice, but not quite as deadly. Thirdly, their slogan “Never Settle”, cannot be any more untrue if you look at their products.

The only reason I got this OPX (OnePlus X) was because a friend of mine bought one, and I swapped my Moto X Play over with him so we could try both devices.

After just 30 minutes, there were only 2 words in my head, “holey sheet!”.

They say first impressions are important, and the OPX definitely impresses. The version I got was the Champagne coloured Chinese version flashed with Oxygen OS, and it feels glorious. The grooved metal sides reminded me of the Note 3, but since it's metal rather than plastic, that shiny look is not going to peel off anytime soon.

The buttons feels well-weighted, and equally premium feeling. The notification slider on the left required just the right amount of force to click into place, and shows no signs of looseness. The metal body is sandwiched by a glass front and back. It looks premium, but not my first choice of material for the back of a smartphone.

Since the back is completely flushed, the glass back is very slippery when you put it on a table top for example. While OnePlus did provide a case in the box that alleviates this issue, covering the phone's design with a case seems like blasphemy. Perhaps a skin might be a better alternative. Also, if you have the champagne version like I have, it's not as much of a fingerprint magnet compared to the darker colours.

The good thing is, that it's not a very big phone either. With a 5.0” FHD AMOLED display, the phone is a welcomed change from the large amount of phablets in the market. It's easy to use one-handed, and fits comfortable in my hands. The AMOLED panel while not the most high resolution in the market, looks very nice with vibrant colours, great viewing angles, as well as good daylight visibility.

At the bottom of the phone, you’ll find 2 sets of precision drilled speaker grills. Only 1 set of it is the speaker though, with the other being the microphone. While being bottom mounted means it's a little easy to accidentally cover it up, it is a pretty decent sounding speaker at least.

Powering the phone, is a somewhat antiquated, but still very decent Snapdragon 801 processor with 3GB of RAM. Yes, it’s not the latest generation of processor. Yes, it’s not a 64-bit processor. But as a consumer, you’re most likely not going to care about that as long as the phone still performs well. And the OPX does perform well. The UI is smooth, and you hardly see any lag while using the phone. Playing games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted was smoother on the OPX compared to the Moto X Play with the 64-bit Snapdragon 615 (and yeah, it runs cooler too).

The 16GB of internal memory can be a bit limited, but it has an optional SD card slot which doubles as a second SIM card slot.

Perhaps part of the smoothness is down to the near stock Android OS on the phone, Oxygen OS. Like the Moto X Play I tested earlier, Oxygen OS basically takes stock Android, and then add on their own (mostly useful) minor enhancements to the system. A few interesting ones are; a Moto X-like feature in which you can wave your hand over the proximity sensor to wake the phone, gestures like double tap to wake or draw pattern to launch camera/flashlight, swipe down from the top right to get into the quick toggles straight, ability to customise icons, ability to choose from either capacitive or on-screen buttons.

Oxygen OS on the OPX comes with a dark mode out of the box, which to me not only looks cool, but it’s also useful for conserving every last drop of that 2,525mAh battery. Since the phone uses an AMOLED panel, using a darker theme with black background means that those black pixels doesn’t use up any power at all since they are not activated at all.

There is a minor downside to the OS though, which is its stability. While it is mostly consistent, every now and again I see glitches here and there. I also encountered an instance in which it froze and auto-rebooted. Unfortunately this is part and parcel of a small Chinese company with a relatively new OS, something OnePlus One owners knows too well of.

In my short time with it, the battery life actually feels quite decent for a battery this size. It last a day of normal use for me very easily. On the down side, charging feels like it takes forever if you’re already used to quick charging like I am.

The camera is a 13MP camera with a f/2.2 aperture. As you probably would have guessed from a phone this thin with a flushed back, there is no OIS (optical image stabilisation). The camera is probably one of the phone’s biggest tradeoff if you ask me.

Daylight shots looks decent when viewed at a smaller size, but when zoomed in a little, reveals poor, over-aggressive, image processing. Dynamic range is not that great too with some shots turning up with overexposed areas, some under.

Low light performance as you would expect as well is not great. No OIS, high ISO, and poor image processing, means that while the camera is somewhat usable at night, you are not going to get any great looking shots.

Overall I would say that the camera is average at best. For a phone that costs 249 USD, it is somewhat acceptable still for this compromise if you don’t use the camera too much. But do note that it is only an acceptable compromise to me because other aspects of the phone is actually not bad. As a gauge, phones like the Moto G 3rd Gen, the Mi 4i, and ZenFone 2 had better image quality in my opinion, and it's mostly down to image processing.

Full resolution images for viewing: OnePlus X, OnePlus One, Moto X Play, Moto G 2014, Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Mi 4i, ZenFone 2

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While the company slogan might be “Never Settle”, you are undoubtedly “settling” when you buy a mid-range or low-priced device. Compromises are inevitable considering something has to be cut out to keep the costs down. How good a budget phone is, will be down to finding the right combination of trade-offs and compromises.

On the OPX, you’re not getting fast charging, not getting a 64-bit processor, not getting NFC, not getting 5GHz WiFi or 802.11ac, and also not getting a great camera. You’re also not getting some other things like a fingerprint sensor, or Cat 6 LTE as well, but that’s forgivable since this is a budget device after all.

Comparing the OPX to the Moto X Play, I would say OnePlus has made mostly the right sacrifices to keep the cost down. The only thing I can say for certain is better on the Moto X Play is the camera performance, and on all other front, the OPX gets my vote.

What you’re getting, is a no frills smartphone running near stock Android, with excellent performance for the price, and a build quality/design that can put devices that costs twice as much to shame. All for a measly 249 USD.

This is the first OnePlus device that I think is worth having a look at. Seeing that local carrier Singtel has begun selling the OnePlus 2 with their services, the prospect of seeing OPX selling at a subsidised rate or even for free with a 2 years service is promising. There are close to zero Android devices available at local carriers running near stock Android, and certainly none that are this affordable. The OPX could be the phone to change that, and for that, I say yes to the OPX.