Specifications and software
Most of the OnePlus One’s appeal lies in its hardware, and it isn’t hard to see why. You’ll have a very hard time finding anything else that delivers the same amount of power at this price level. It all begins with a top-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, which has four CPU cores running at 2.5GHz and an Adreno 330 GPU. That’s matched with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage space( a 16GB model is available in other markets but not in India at launch time) .
The 5.5-inch 1080x1920-pixel display has its touch sensitive layer fused to display panel, which OnePlus claims makes the screen far stronger than the common OGS( one-glass solution) method of production.
There’s Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0 along with NFC and GPS. There are also three microphones for noise reduction. Sadly, there’s no microSD slot. The 3, 100mAh battery is also sealed in.
While certainly impressive, hardware is only one part of the OnePlus One’s appeal. Another is - or should have been - its software. Since it first debuted, the OnePlus One has proudly used CyanogenMod, one of the world’s most popular alternative Android distributions. Based on the Android Open Source Project( AOSP), CyanogenMod promises a whole host of features that go beyond what even stock Android delivers, such as themes and configurable UI elements, improved privacy controls, more flexible access to settings, root access and performance tweaks. Essentially, it gives users much more control over their devices than most custom Android-based interfaces and OS forks. The version on the OnePlus One is CM 11S, which is based on Android 4.4.2.
So that’s all well and good, but in a surprise move mere days before the official OnePlus One launch, all that changed. The company will apparently not be allowed to sell its phones with CyanogenMod in India, thanks to the software maker’s exclusive tie-up with Micromax for the forthcoming Yu line of phones.
In a statement on its website, OnePlus stated it was just as surprised by the news as everyone else, and as a result it will have to speed up development on its own Android fork, which is now planned for 2015 and will be built around the Android 5.0 codebase. This new software should be ready for wide release by February, but It isn’t entirely clear how this will affect the Ones sold between now and then. The first batch of devices being shipped out to buyers has not been delayed, and it seems as though these will not be re-flashed with a new OS, but will not receive automatic updates until the in-house build is ready.
This is a huge disappointment, but nevertheless, intrepid OnePlus One buyers should be able to install CM themselves by following the instructions on the official website.
On the other hand, while CyanogenMod opens a lot of doors in terms of customisability and power, not everyone wants to face dozens of potentially confusing options at every turn. Few people actually discover and use all the features their devices offer, and for those who aren’t really comfortable with smartphones, CM’s features might be more confusing than helpful. With that in mind, the custom UI skins that other manufacturers ship might be more appealing.
Usage and performance
We liked what we saw of CyanogenMod 11S running on our review unit. While not the most polished in terms of graphics, it definitely does give users a lot of control over the device’s operating environment. We weren’t huge fans of the blocky custom icons which weren’t easy to tell apart, or some of the other custom visual elements.
However those are just minor niggles compared to the amount of joy we felt when we discovered each new thing that could be changed, enhanced and customised. It starts right at the splash screen animation, which you can customise. The list of things you can change is never-ending: the widgets and shortcuts on the lockscreen, the screen colour temperature, the appearance of status bar icons, the shortcuts in the notifications sh