Android By Russell Holly Apr. 23, 2014 2:51 pm
Is it the titan killer? The flagship stopper? The king slayer? We don’t know yet, but after spending a little time with the OnePlus One, there’s one thing we know for sure: this is one heck of a smartphone.
It has been hyped well beyond what it probably should have been, but now that the OnePlus One is here, it’s time to put the phone through its paces and see what this scrappy new hardware manufacturer is capable of. Out of the box, the phone has a nice texture to the slightly curved back, complemented by a Gorilla Glass 3 front.
One one looks almost like a slightly larger Nexus 5, that is, until you get a feel for the curved bezel around the edges of the phone. It’s not an earth-shattering design or anything, but the phone is plenty comfortable to hold as long as you are alright with a 5.5-inch display. It’s a large phone, and it feels like a large phone no matter what the folks at OnePlus try to tell you during their hype sessions.
This phone is fast. The Snapdragon 801 is known for performance, but combined with CyanogenMod, the hardware really screams. The unit used for our hands-on is running a pre-production build of the software that will be available at launch, but even with that handicap there’s a lot of power under the hood. When sat next to Google’s pure vision of Android, the Nexus 5, it’s clear that this phone has the kind of raw horsepower Android fans are looking for.
That’s kind of the point of the OnePlus One, though. It was built from the ground up for the hardcore Android user. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a single set of specs that appeal to everyone in that niche. The OnePlus One has no removable battery or expandable SD card slot, but the 3100mAh battery and 64GB option should be enough — even for those who feel like they would be settling on a phone whose tag line is “Never Settle.”
Another point of contention for the Android faithful is the age-old argument of on-screen keys versus capacitive keys. Google has clearly made the full-time shift to on-screen, but not everyone else has. The OnePlus One has both, making it so you can have on-screen keys if you want them, or you can use the capacitive keys on the glass. When you don’t use the capacitive keys they all but disappear, save for the extra bezel you now have. Curiously, the button layout for the capacitive buttons and the on-screen keys are not the same, so it’s unlikely you’ll be switching back and forth, unless you want to drive yourself crazy.
So, what’s special about this phone? Cyanogen, Inc. has made a special version of their popular Android variant for the OnePlus One. CyanogenMod 11S is the first step towards some new visual concepts that they have been playing with for almost a year now.
The company has added a theme engine for a new and simple personalization tool, and they have also been spending some time making it so the phone can be controlled even with the display off. Much in the same way the Moto X allows you to call to it from across the room, saying “Hey Snapdragon” will allow the phone to launch any of a number of apps even when asleep. Google Now seems like the most obvious choice for most people, but as is often the case with CyanogenMod, the sky is the limit.
We’ll be doing more over the next few days as we get to know the OnePlus One, especially once the software has been updated to the final build, but out of the box you can consider us impressed. There’s still room for improvement, especially since this is a pre-production release that is riddled with little bugs. Thankfully, though, none of them are expected to be there at launch next month.
The OnePlus One with CyanogenMod is more than a bit promising, especially for what is essentially a new company throwing its hat into a very saturated ring.
More...
It has been hyped well beyond what it probably should have been, but now that the OnePlus One is here, it’s time to put the phone through its paces and see what this scrappy new hardware manufacturer is capable of. Out of the box, the phone has a nice texture to the slightly curved back, complemented by a Gorilla Glass 3 front.
One one looks almost like a slightly larger Nexus 5, that is, until you get a feel for the curved bezel around the edges of the phone. It’s not an earth-shattering design or anything, but the phone is plenty comfortable to hold as long as you are alright with a 5.5-inch display. It’s a large phone, and it feels like a large phone no matter what the folks at OnePlus try to tell you during their hype sessions.
This phone is fast. The Snapdragon 801 is known for performance, but combined with CyanogenMod, the hardware really screams. The unit used for our hands-on is running a pre-production build of the software that will be available at launch, but even with that handicap there’s a lot of power under the hood. When sat next to Google’s pure vision of Android, the Nexus 5, it’s clear that this phone has the kind of raw horsepower Android fans are looking for.
That’s kind of the point of the OnePlus One, though. It was built from the ground up for the hardcore Android user. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a single set of specs that appeal to everyone in that niche. The OnePlus One has no removable battery or expandable SD card slot, but the 3100mAh battery and 64GB option should be enough — even for those who feel like they would be settling on a phone whose tag line is “Never Settle.”
Another point of contention for the Android faithful is the age-old argument of on-screen keys versus capacitive keys. Google has clearly made the full-time shift to on-screen, but not everyone else has. The OnePlus One has both, making it so you can have on-screen keys if you want them, or you can use the capacitive keys on the glass. When you don’t use the capacitive keys they all but disappear, save for the extra bezel you now have. Curiously, the button layout for the capacitive buttons and the on-screen keys are not the same, so it’s unlikely you’ll be switching back and forth, unless you want to drive yourself crazy.
So, what’s special about this phone? Cyanogen, Inc. has made a special version of their popular Android variant for the OnePlus One. CyanogenMod 11S is the first step towards some new visual concepts that they have been playing with for almost a year now.
The company has added a theme engine for a new and simple personalization tool, and they have also been spending some time making it so the phone can be controlled even with the display off. Much in the same way the Moto X allows you to call to it from across the room, saying “Hey Snapdragon” will allow the phone to launch any of a number of apps even when asleep. Google Now seems like the most obvious choice for most people, but as is often the case with CyanogenMod, the sky is the limit.
We’ll be doing more over the next few days as we get to know the OnePlus One, especially once the software has been updated to the final build, but out of the box you can consider us impressed. There’s still room for improvement, especially since this is a pre-production release that is riddled with little bugs. Thankfully, though, none of them are expected to be there at launch next month.
The OnePlus One with CyanogenMod is more than a bit promising, especially for what is essentially a new company throwing its hat into a very saturated ring.
More...
