OnePlus appeared on the scene with its first handset in 2014, followed up by last year’sOnePlus 2 and the even more budget-friendlyOnePlus X ( which now looks to have been discontinued in most parts of the world) . While mostly well received, the phones haven’t been without their issues( including the invite you needed to buy them), and with its third flagship OnePlus is looking to set down a new marker.
First of all this is a fine-looking phone: It’s curved and contoured in all the right places, smooth and comfortable to the touch, and just 7.4 mm thick( down from 9.9 mm last year) . It’s not quite as gorgeous as the likes of theSamsung Galaxy S7 or the iPhone 6S, in my eyes at least, but it’s definitely on a par with phones such as the LG G5 and Nexus 6P as far as looks go.
The aluminum unibody OnePlus has gone for this year feels great in the hand and it’s one of those phones that compels you to pick it up and have a play around with it. The square, raised camera lens is the only moment of inelegance on the whole device, but overall the engineers at OnePlus have done a fantastic job on the design.
There’s even – wonder of wonders – a physical mute switch, as there was on the OnePlus 2, something sorely lacking on the majority of Android handsets these days. Bizarrely though it seems to have come at the expense of the Do Not Disturb software toggle switch available in stock Android and we would have preferred to have kept both options.
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Speaking of software, the OnePlus 3 runs a lightly skinned version of Android Marshmallow called OxygenOS, which OnePlus develops itself. There are thankfully very few changes from stock Android and hardly any bloatware apps – just basic Gallery and Music apps, plus a file manager that’s actually pretty useful.