OnePlus 3 First Impressions

Before we get started, I would like to give kudos to OnePlus for ditching their wretched invite system and allowing everyone to buy the phone when it was first announced.

This year, OnePlus pretty much did the sensible thing when it came to their latest offering. They improved the areas of weakness from it’s predecessor, the OnePlus 2. It’s nothing crazy, just neat, sleek, and comes with what you need; the phone, a USB-C to Type-A cable, and the all new dash charge wall adapter. This adapter brings us to our first improvement and that is quick charge. Apparently, this new dash charge system can give you 60% battery life in roughly 30 minutes, which is pretty nuts.

Next improvement is clearly the design. This time, OnePlus ditched the sandstone back cover in exchange for a really nice all aluminum design. Camera layout and antenna bands definitely give it that HTC One M9 look while the rest of the phone resembles an iPhone 6s Plus.

Now I usually hate talking about specs in a 2016 flagship because you guys know that most of these phones have the same internals but the OnePlus 3 does have a few differences. The main difference is of course the price. This phone will run you $399 plus shipping. No tax. So a little over $400 dollars if you choose priority. That's nuts, considering this phone is running...

• Snapdragon 820
• Quad-core 2.2ghz and 1.6ghz processors
• 3000mAh battery
• 64gb storage
• 6gb RAM

Yes, 6gb of RAM. Making this the first phone that I have used that has more than 4gb of RAM in it. Now, RAM isn't always the deciding factor to whether a phone is going to be good, or even run fast or smooth all of the time. What we do know is that it can't hurt to have as much of it as possible, right?

Well, according to some recent videos and articles that I have seen, the 6gb of RAM on this phone is being poorly managed and leading other phones with less RAM power to blow it out of the water in RAM management tests. If you guys want me to run some tests against other flagship phones or even phones in the same price range, leave a comment below letting me know.

Something I wish OnePlus improved is the display. It is an optic AMOLED 1080p display which honestly looks good but if you are coming from a phone that has a 2K display, you will certainly notice the difference. It’s not a huge deal and certainly not worth an extra $100-200 but it would have made this phone near perfect, if possible.

Another small gripe comes with the alert slider. I love the idea of it but I kind of wish it could toggle between vibration, silent, and loud as opposed to whether or not your phone has priority or no notifications. It’s nitpicking at this point but something I wish it could do. Perhaps a software update could allow this?

Speaking of software, Oxygen OS and 6gb of RAM is SUPER smooth. No lag and no bloat. Almost stock Android but with a few helpful features. Unforunately, one of them that's not helpful is shelf. I wish it could do more but it really doesn't do much.

The rest of the phone's OS is pretty basic, but still has some key features like gestures and customizations, like a system wide dark mode. You can still customize and/or switch between capacitive or on screen buttons but I enjoy the extra screen real estate and have stuck with the capacitive keys.

The fingerprint sensor on the OnePlus 3 is WAY better than the one on the OnePlus 2 and could very well be the second best fingerprint sensor (next to TouchID) that I have ever used. It's blazing fast and almost perfect with accuracy. Plus, it doubles as a Home button (though it's capacitive and not a physical press down) and is much better this time around.

Finally, camera on the back seems to be pretty good. I took a few sample pictures so far with auto settings and everything has turned out pretty nice. I can do a more in depth review of the camera if you guys want but this 16MP sensor won't blow anyone away or make people upset. It’s good enough.

That's it for now guys, if you would like to see this phone up against a few other flagships or budget phones in this price range, please let me know in the comments below which phone you would like to see.