The OnePlus 6 Review: Among The Best Of 2018
by Andrei Frumusanu on July 27, 2018 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 6
Over the last several years OnePlus has evolved from a vendor looking to disrupt the smartphone market to a company whose flagships are now eagerly awaited every year. The OnePlus 6 is the company’s biggest design change yet, and brings with it flagship specifications while still maintaining its characteristic advantage in terms of product pricing as well as long-term software support.
I have to admit that for me personally this will be the first time I’d have reviewed OnePlus device as I had missed out on past reviews and we’ve had a coverage gap last year when it came to mobile devices. As such I’m pretty much coming into the review of the OP6 with no pre-conceptions about either hardware or software of the phone, and based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks and what you’ll get to read over the following pages, I’ve been massively impressed.
OnePlus 6 | |
SoC | Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 4x Kryo 385 Gold @ up to 2.80 GHz 4x Kryo 385 Silver @ up to 1.77 GHz Adreno 630 @ up to 710 MHz |
Display | 6.28-inch 2280x1080 (19:9) AMOLED |
Dimensions | 155.7 x 75.4 x 7.8 mm 177 grams |
RAM | 6GB / 8GB / 8GB LPDDR4x |
NAND | 64GB / 128GB / 256GB |
Battery | 3300mAh (12.7Wh) |
Front Camera | 16MP Sony IMX371, f/2.0, EIS |
Primary Rear Camera | 16MP Sony IMX519 1.22µm pixels, f/1.7, OIS |
Secondary Rear Camera | 20MP Sony IMX376K, 1.0µm pixels, f/1.7 Low-light & Depth |
SIM Size | 2x NanoSIM |
Connectivity | 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi BT 5.0, NFC |
Interfaces | USB 2.0 Type-C; 3.5mm audio |
Launch OS | Android O (8.1) with OxygenOS 5.1 |
MSRP Launch Price |
6GB/64GB: ¥3199 / $529 / €519 8GB/128GB: ¥3599 / $579 / €569 8GB/256GB: ¥3999 / $629 / €619 |
Starting off with the specifications of the phone, this is indeed a 2018 flagship phone as it comes with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC powered by 4x Kryo 385 Gold (Cortex A75 based) up to 2.8GHz and 4x Kryo 385 Silver (Cortex A55 based) up to 1.77GHz. We’ve had extensive coverage on the SoC starting off with the announcement piece, to our performance preview and our in-depth investigations included in the Galaxy S9 review. To say the least, every Snapdragon 845 device over the last couple of months has been very impressive and I’m not expecting any less from the OnePlus 6.
OnePlus really opted to give the OP6 a more than generous amount of RAM as well as high storage capabilities. The base model comes with 6GB LPDDR4X and 64GB of UFS storage, with the larger 128GB and 256GB (!!) models sport 8GB of RAM. The 8GB of main memory seems overkill as in daily situations the phone rarely uses more than 3.5GB, so there’s still massive amounts of headroom available for memory hungry applications or heavy multi-tasking. I commend OnePlus on the 256GB variant of the phone as not only does it makes up for the lack of a microSD slot, but actually comes at a relatively reasonable price premium compared to what other vendors ask for higher-capacity models.
The OP6 comes with essentially all required global frequency bands and as such the phone should be an option and of interest to anybody, regardless of market and carrier frequency bands.
Design-wise of course the OP6 marks a generational step it has ditched the metal body of its predecessors and for the first time opted to use a glass back on the phone. The phone comes in four different colours and two finishes: The recently announced red variant as well as the launch model “mirror black” come with a regular shiny glass finish. The “pearl white” and “midnight black” variant, the latter of which is depicted in the review, both have a matte finish which tries to mimic a polished metallic look. Personally I found this finish to be very interesting and do prefer it a lot to phones with the regular glossy glass; however some people have noted that it might be too slippery so it’s certainly something subjective and depending on personal preference.
As Ian noted in our initial hands-on article, one thing that you would expect with the inclusion of a glass panel back is the ability to wirelessly charge the phone. Unfortunately OnePlus doesn’t see the need to include this into their phones as of yet as they deem the ecosystem too immature and found wireless charging not commonly used. Obviously this is a chicken-and-egg issue, and while lately I have increased my usage of wireless charging and even now have a pad next to my bed, I don’t find the lack of it all that troublesome for a device. It’s also possible that including a wireless charging coil would have resulted in an ever so slightly thicker phone, which given the overall larger dimensions of the device would have likely hampered its ergonomics.
One controversial addition to the OnePlus 6 is the display notch. Here the screen extends upwards to the sides where usually we would’ve found the top bezel of the phone. In the middle cut-out we find the earpiece flanked by one side the sensor array and notification light, and on the other side the 16MP front-facing camera. As I’ve talked about in our review of the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro, the notch is absolutely not bothersome at all in daily usage and can be blacked out via software option, something that works extremely well on the AMOLED screen of the phone.
Speaking of screens, the OnePlus 6 sports an AMOLED screen with a 6.28” diagonal. Again the diagonal has little meaning nowadays as the 19:9 aspect ratio screen doesn’t properly convey the actual size of the device. At 75.4mm wide the OnePlus 6 is 1-2mm wider than some of the competitor devices in the same size range; however the very thin rounded sides of the phone do help it a lot in terms of ergonomics so it’s still extremely useable. One aspect that OnePlus could have in my opinion done better with the OP6 is to try to reduce the side bezels just a bit more as I think that would have made for a much sleeker look.
At the back of the phone OnePlus rearranged its camera positioning from the top left corner to the middle with a vertical dual-camera layout with the flash and fingerprint sensor located underneath. Camera wise the main rear sensor is a Sony IMX519 sporting a 4608x3456 resolution (16MP) and has a pixel pitch of 1.22µm. The CMOS is supported by a f/1.7 lens with a 35mm equivalent focal length of 25mm and the module includes OIS.
The secondary sensor is also a Sony sensor coming in at 20MP and f/1.7, however this isn’t a telephoto lens but rather a OnePlus unique use-case where the secondary sensor is used sometimes in low-light conditions as well as for depth data in capturing modes such as portrait mode. We’ll look into the camera evaluation extensively in another large comparison across a wide variety of recent flagship devices.
At the bottom of the phone we find a single bottom-firing speaker which we evaluate later on in the review, the phone’s USB-C connector port, the bottom microphone as well a 3.5mm audio jack. Keeping the 3.5mm jack is definitely an advantage for the OP6 as the company evidently resisted the popular urge to restrict user choice on the matter. As a note, I’m still looking into rebuilding our audio evaluation methodologies, but likely won’t have anything ready until later in the year.
On the left side of the phone we find the SIM tray which contains two nanoSIM slots, with the volume rocker located underneath.
On the right side we find a slider button which acts as a hardware switch to quickly switch between the three states of silent, vibrate only and regular ringing, a feature that’s essentially not found any more in many Android devices.
Overall the OnePlus 6’s design is very impressive – build quality looks and feels very solid. It’s a large phone but thanks to its ergonomics it still manages to achieve very good usability. Some people will have concerns about the new glass back of the phone and how that affects durability, but personally I don’t mind it at all and find the matte finish variant extremely pleasing.
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Icehawk - Saturday, July 28, 2018 - link
Ahhhhh. That’s why phones aren’t USB3, ok I always wondered why not but never actually researched why.jcc5169 - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Is One-Plus even available in the US market?PeachNCream - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
That's a nice phone! I'd prefer the addition of a microSD slot by maybe adding the capability to one of the SIM slots (I've seen a few dual SIM phones offer up that option) since removable storage is nice to have if you're moving from one phone to another. In this case, there's the potential to lose quite a bit of data if the OP6 dies suddenly. The price increase for storage capacity is VERY reasonable as well. It's way outside of my price range for something I carry with me on a daily basis though. There's just too many day-to-day bumps and knocks around along with the risk of loss or theft that have me convinced that it's not worth the price of entry to get something above the bottom feeders like the $5.29 new Huawei I just picked up last week. Phones, in my mind, are disposable devices so low-cost is the way to go.eastcoast_pete - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Nice review, Andrei! Question: I may have overlooked it, but this phone is NOT water- or dust proof, at least as far as I can tell, correct? That is a major minus point for a flagship phone in my book, as it "breaks" the deal/compromise of sealed battery, but IP67 or 68 water and dust proofing. Hey, even Apple came around to that view eventually. Here, we get the worst of both worlds, no user-replaceable battery, no SD card slot, and no water and dust proofing.Different question @ Andrei: are all benchmark tests for phones conducted at about the same room temperature? I assume they are, but, if they are not, that would add a major variable. Heat dissipation is just so much easier when in a room at, let's say, 20 C, versus one at 30 C (and we are having hot summers this year). And, circling back to my comment about water proofing, I imagine it's harder for a fully sealed phone (like the majority of current flagship phones, i.e. S9, S9+, V30/35, Experia Z etc.) to dissipate heat than it is for phones that aren't fully sealed up. Any comments? Thanks!
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
It's not IP certified but as you may have read in some teardowns it does have many of the protections that are usually found in IP68 phones. I guess it could survive accidental water situations.The sustained are done in constant-ish (21+- 2°C) temperature, yes. I don't think IP proofing has any effect on thermals, the ingress points are irrelevant to temperature. Most phone's thermals are determined by the mid-frame build and how it's able to dissipate heat over its whole footprint to the screen and back.
128bit - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Never like chinese phones there phones looks good, but there quality overall not that good same like there cars and by the way this phone overheating.Dr. Swag - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Great article, but could you take care to proofread a bit better? There's tons of grammar mistakes (mostly missed commas) all over the place.Dr. Swag - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
For the benchmarks, did you test for benchmark cheating at all?tsk2k - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Yes! Thank you so much Andrei and Anandtech, this is the only proper way to review a mobile phone.The web tests and frame drop testing is amazing, finally a way to quantify what I've been saying for years.
shoreview - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Too bad that they refuse to put Verizon Band 13 LTE in there. It's pointless crippling of the phone. Like the missing ex-Nextel CDMA band that Sprint uses.Any insight on why this is? Did Verizon and Sprint actively intervene to keep OnePlus off their networks? In any case I've been on Android from the start but the support situation and security update situation are leading me to look more and more at iPhone. Which won't come easy; the USB lockdown on iOS and certain aspects of the OS are annoying to say the least. But this was one of my last hopes for replacing my Verizon-supplied Note 4 with another Android and it has been dashed. Getting a non-carrier-branded Samsung is a non-starter until they start taking long-term security support seriously; even Google Pixel is short of Apple standards by a year or two.