Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “OnePlus 6 Review: Right On the Money!”.
So this is uh. This is a pretty great phone, so i’ve been using oneplus 6 every day now for about two weeks and it is absolutely daily driver material. I think people who buy it, who know what they’re getting themselves into will like it, a lot and it’s pretty easy to recommend. So that’s right off the top. Really the more interesting part is reviewing.
This phone for me has become an exercise in a study of the law of diminishing returns. The law of diminishing returns is a point at which the level of benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. So you see a 300 phone. You get a certain amount of value, then you spend 300 more and you get a lot more value. You spend 300 more than that you get a little more value and then you spend another 300 more.
You get just a tiny bit more. So, honestly, the most important feature of the oneplus 6 is the price. It starts at 529 bucks in this world of 7, 800, 900, 000 flagships, so they’re kind of working in the reverse direction.
Instead of pushing value as high as you possibly can. They’Re kind of thinking: how much can we cut off of the price without sacrificing a significant amount of value? How cheap can we make this phone and still make it great and every year, oneplus does this? They have to make this balance of things. They want to cut out versus things they want to keep, and i think this year, they’ve made a bunch of good choices and come out with a balanced budget performance beast. So this year is a 2018 version of that. I’Ll give you the updates of what i’ve found from my experience, which is most of it being positive and then i’ll fill you in on the shortcuts or the shavings they had to take, because you don’t get to this price without some of these. So on the outside, the build is legit awesome.
The actual look of the phone might not speak to everyone, but i’m a fan of the midnight black here or the matte black version, while there’s also a much glossier much fingerprintier mirror black and there’s also a soft white coming soon. It has these awesome buttons. I love these clicky buttons. It has the alert, slider, that’s firm and also clicky, and i was actually confusing it with the power button pretty early when i first got this phone just because of the placement it’s kind of high, but after using it for a while. I stopped doing that and the whole phone has this nice wedge shape. Phones, don’t necessarily have to be thin for me to like them, but this phone feels super solid with a lot of metal in there it has a headphone jack.
It has a dual sim card. Tray – and it even has this subtle s – shape when you see it in the frosted glass back, it’s clean, so overall, it honestly looks and feels quality uh. It has a slight bump in the back for the camera: that’s not really a big deal, but for the emissions there are some conscious choices that they made to leave out of this phone, that they’re, hoping that you won’t mind so much so ready for these there’s.
No expandable storage, uh just dual sim card, so no micro, sd card expansion, the speaker situation is pretty weak. It just has this single downward facing speaker, which is the worst part of the phone’s hardware. It’S pretty average at best kind of tinny at high volumes and there’s no second speaker in the earpiece to make a stereo sound.
So it’s super easy to block this one by accident. I’Ve done it the fingerprint reader on the back. It’S not that bad, but it’s a little bit smaller. It used to be a full circle. Now the smaller surface area is a bit of a bummer there’s no wireless charging, so most phones nowadays with glass backs, are doing it to enable wireless charging, since it doesn’t work through metal. Oneplus has gone with the glass back, but didn’t add wireless charging, and then it’s also not officially ip rated for water resistance, oneplus kind of just says like it’s: okay, if you splash water on it, it’ll survive daily use, but they don’t officially ip67 or ip68 rate.
It so keep that in mind, so it has a bunch of great upside. A bunch of you know great build great materials, great construction, but all those other little things that you have to weigh against that now on wireless charging, i got to say the battery situation of the oneplus 6 is really interesting. This is going to sound like i’m. Just defending oneplus or not putting in wireless charging look, they could have.
They definitely could have put it in with this glass back and it would have been great, but i don’t really miss it on this phone. The combination of this battery, it’s a 3 300 milliamp hour battery decent size, plus the near stock android with oxygen os plus a 1080p ammo led display, plus a snapdragon 845, with eight gigs of ram, i’m getting like six plus hours every single day of screen on Time, i’m getting a plus battery life, if i don’t use it that much it’s like ending the day with 40, it’s really good, and on top of all that you throw in their dash charging, which is still in this phone. It’S still the fastest zero to 100 charging i’ve ever seen in a phone, it’s super convenient and when you have all that it just kind of feels like i don’t need wireless charging, it would be. Nice it’ll be cool, but it’s not a deal breaker for me and i think oneplus is hoping that it’s not a deal breaker for you either. So there’s that but uh. Now, let’s, let’s talk about that 1080p display oneplus has stuck to their guns and they’re going with yet again, a 1080p optic amoled display 6.3 inches from corner to corner, so it’s huge and this time with a notch up at the top. It’S part strategy part sacrifice. The resolution 2280 by 1080 is actually hugely beneficial for battery life.
As i mentioned, it’s also pretty great for performance you’re not pushing nearly as many pixels, which means your gpu is not working as hard. Everything is super smooth, but also now it’s not going to be as sharp as the galaxy s9s and the pixel 2 xl’s of the world, which have quad hd displays, but then again, like we saw in the pixel, quality control isn’t easy and a great 1440p panel Is not cheap or easy to find so, instead of settling for an average quad hd screen to save money, this phone has what i’d say is the best looking 1080p oled in any phone right now it gets really bright. It’S colorful there’s a couple different display modes for different color profiles with different amounts of saturation. It’S good. The best part of this display is actually the clever way. Oneplus has handled the notch up at the top, but now that we’re getting deeper into this whole world of android phones having notches and android p, coming out with notch support and developers getting on board we’re seeing less and less apps with those bugs that are cut Off by the notch, so that’s just kind of where we’re at. I think a lot of manufacturers hear everyone complaining about that notch, though including oneplus, so there’s plenty that they’re doing to hide it. If you really hate it, in fact, as you get around to using the oneplus 6 you’ll notice, the display setting lets you hide the notch anytime.
If you don’t want to use, it works great with an oled display. Those are black pixels and when you’re, actually in apps, you almost never lose actual real estate in the app. Actually, you never lose real estate. In the app like back in the days of the essential phone, it would actually be cutting into the app you’re using it.
Doesn’T do that anymore unless you actually go into the display, menu and turn on full screen mode and explicitly give that app permission so by default, unlike the iphone, it doesn’t cut off youtube videos. This is the same as the p20 pro and other phones with notches. Now you still see everything and you can turn on full screen mode if you’re cool with the notch interrupting part of the app you’re in if you’re not into it. You never have to turn that on.
So that’s clean and oxygen os just as a whole is fast and smooth as it is. It also has a pretty good amount of extra features while still staying pretty close to stock android. There’S still, this super fast facial recognition, there’s the gaming mode that doesn’t let notifications interrupt your gameplay there’s an ambient display mode. That’S new! That works when you raise your phone up, but it’s not always on, so i actually don’t even really bother using it. Basically, it’s not lacking features, but you can already know. I tend to keep my setup pretty clean, and this phone definitely lets me do that now for software updates, when you think about the longevity of the phone, this is actually one of the first of like maybe six phones to get included in the android p beta Program alongside the pixel, so now it’s not just the pixel.
This is one of those phones. You can put the android p beta on and that’s a pretty good sign as far as the future of when it’ll get updates being close to stock android, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee it’s going to get the same, update timing as the pixel. You still probably have to get a pixel to be first in line for that, but it probably does mean it’ll be better than your samsungs and lg’s many months down the road. So that’s pretty good. I really like oxygen os.
Still. It’S clean nothing’s too, in your face. It has a few quarks and a few extra things like the shelf that put a lot of useful information at your fingertips but doesn’t overwhelm you and you can always hide most of it. So i’m a fan pretty much. The only thing i don’t like about the software here is the new gestures.
I tried them for a while and they do work perfectly fine, there’s no bugs or anything, and they are intuitive but they’re. Just not smooth, like i’m so used to the iphone’s gestures. Being extremely responsive and smooth to my touch – and you got to give apple credit for that and oneplus swipe gestures are just not that so i’m sticking to the buttons on this phone. So really the last big question: we have that we’re wondering about from the impressions. Video is the camera situation on the oneplus 6.. Well, if you saw the last video, you saw the blind test. You probably already have some thoughts about it. For me, it’s like a b-plus as far as camera quality in a smartphone, but that’s because the a-plus smartphones, the the pixel 2s of the world and the iphone 10 and the galaxy s9 are way up there.
Those are the eight nine hundred thousand dollar flagships. So this is a b plus as far as cameras, but it’s an a plus for the price. It is definitely better than other 500 phones. This guy has a 16 megapixel primary camera with optical stabilization and an f 1.7 aperture, and it takes pretty nice shots. I’Ve been shooting with it pretty confidently for a while focus is fine overall there’s plenty of detail and not a lot of noise and pretty accurate colors if anything it biases, maybe a little towards overexposing more often than under, but dynamic range is good enough. That that hasn’t been a problem and every photo is plenty saturated. So overall i’d say: i’m pretty satisfied with the photos from the oneplus 6 camera, i’m not blown away or anything. I’M not super excited to use it, but satisfied that second camera.
We were wondering about. It’S not a telephoto camera, it’s just another 20 megapixel sensor with no ois. It’S basically used for depth information for portrait mode. As far as we can tell which is okay, i guess it’s decent.
It’S not great! I’M not going to go out of my way to use it that much, but basically the idea is, it doesn’t take photos that are quite at the level of the highest end flagships, but those flagships are so much more expensive. This definitely beats any other 500 phone. In fact, that’s really the theme for this whole oneplus 6. If you’ve noticed the whole review, it’s either knocking at the door of those flagship smartphones or it’s like one small step behind, but that is definitely beating any other five.
Six hundred dollar android phone, the specs – are ridiculous: snapdragon, 845, six or eight gigs of ram. I have 128 gigs of storage, a 16 megapixel camera 3300 milliamp hour battery. That’S knocking out the door of like the highest end flagships. We have right now definitely better than any other 500 phone. It’S your glass and metal build it’s your quality construction, great buttons uh. It might be missing wireless charging and a good speaker and ip certification, but it has a dual sim. It has a headphone jack. It has usbc really fast charging great battery life.
Huge amoled display definitely better than other five 600 phones. The camera, like we said, is b plus, maybe, but that’s like, we said way better than any other five or 500 600 phone, which makes it feel like a plus for the price. This is both literally and figuratively. The most polished phone oneplus has ever made.
I think the choices they made really of what to keep versus what to cut out balanced out to a quality phone. It would have been so easy to review this phone like a 900 flagship and just bash it for like not having wireless charging or not having an a plus camera, but they did a really good job and it’s a great phone for the money, a plus for The price that’s been it. Let me know what you think, thanks for watching talk to you guys, the next one peace .