After leaks, teasers, hype and some “melodramatic” event, OnePlus has finally launched the OnePlus 5, for the Indian market. The 6GB RAM variant is priced at Rs 32,999, while the 8GB RAM is priced at Rs 37,999. We spent some time with the device at the launch event and here is our first impressions of the OnePlus 5.
Design and Display
OnePlus has talked length and breadth about the design aspect of its latest flagship device. To start with, the phone has a ‘horizon line’, which distinguish the front and back panel of the device, making it look sleeker and compact. True to its claim, the OnePlus 5 issleek with 7.25mm thickness and is lightweight as well. But, like with its previous smartphones, this one has carried forward the legacy of getting inspired from Apple’s design language.
Yes, it has a strong resemblance to the Apple iPhone 7 Plus’s design.
The phone features similar Antenna bands, similarly-positioned dual-camera setup and even the buttons are placed at exactly on the lines of iPhone 7 Plus.
We have seen many other competitors following this style of design, and it seems the brand is yet another addition to it.
At the front, there is a 5.5-inch screen, which the company boasts has 10 percent slimmer bezels along with a fingerprint sensor flanked between recent menu and back button. At the right, there is a power button, while on the left, there is an alert slider and volume controls. At the base, you will find Headphone jack coupled with USB Type-C port and speaker grille. Overall, the smartphone looks good, but, unfortunately, has a strong resemblance to the Apple iPhone 7 Plus.
On the display front, there is not much of a difference as compared to its predecessor -OnePlus 3T. You have the same 5.5-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display, which was present in the OnePlus 3/3T. During our brief testing period, we found out the display had decent viewing angles, though the screens are a tad reflective in nature.
Hardware and Software
There is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Processor along with Adreno 540 GPU. The phone comes with two RAM variants and configurations: one with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, while another one has an 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Incidentally, OnePlus has been accused of rigging the benchmark result of OnePlus 5.
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On the software front, it runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat with company’s Oxygen UI running on top of it. The brand has added some nifty features, and one of them is the reading mode. This allows to change the brightness and colour tone of the display and makes it look like the one we have seen in Amazon Kindle.
Camera
OnePlus has promoted the dual camera setup of its latest smartphones almost everywhere for the last 30 days. It is a combination of the 16-megapixel sensor with f/1.7 aperture, Sony IMX398 sensor and a 20-megapixel telephoto lens with Aperture f/2.6. The camera also offers up to 8x zoom which is a combination of optical zoom, and it comes with fast AF (autofocus), where both the lenses are used to capture the image. The brand claims that it increases the focus speed by 40 percent.
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Further, there are different modes including Portrait Mode, Pro Mode with the histogram. Interestingly, the smartphone has been heavily criticised for the camera performance and one again the company has taken “inspiration” when it comes to the so-called Portrait mode from Apple. As per various reviews, the lack of OIS (optical image stabilisation) has dented the overall performance of the device.
Battery and Connectivity