Specs at a glance: OnePlus One Screen 1920×1080 5.5"(401 ppi) IPS OS Cyanogenmod 11S (based on Android KitKat 4.4.2) CPU 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 RAM 3GB GPU Adreno 330 Storage 16GB or 64GB, no MicroSD slot Networking GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz, LTE bands 1/3/4/7/17/38/40, Dual Band 802.11b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS Ports MicroUSB 2.0, headphones Camera 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera Size 152.9 mm x 75.9 mm x 8.9 mm Weight 162g Battery 3100 mAh Starting price $300 unlocked Other perks RBG notification LED, NFC

In our time using the new OnePlus One smartphone, we tried our best to ignore its cost. We wanted to focus on its remarkable traits—its quality 5.5-inch screen, magnificent battery life, Cyanogenmod functionality, quad-core processor, 13MP backward-facing camera, unnecessarily nice front-facing camera, handsome design—and judge them in a vacuum. "Focus solely on how it stacked up to the best-selling modern Android sets"—that was our mantra.

But it's hard to ignore the magical, mystical fact that we actually had a OnePlus One in hand. Months after the phone’s public reveal, and at the beginnings of its odd, invite-only shopping process, the notoriously hard-to-buy phone arrived. And once the price came up, all bias was completely overtaken: $300 for the 16GB model, $350 for 64GB, completely unlocked, no contract necessary.

Google and LG's Nexus 5 is the only other smartphone that comes close to matching OnePlus’ smartphone-to-price ratio, and OnePlus is hitting this price without the benefit of Google's deep pockets. It’s tempting to pin that detail as the headline of any review. Yet the truly remarkable “how’d they do that” part of this phone isn’t its cost, but its quality.

Video impressions

Hands on with the OnePlus One.

Design

















We received the higher-memory (64 GB) OnePlus One model, and it was packed in a “rip here, pull here, open here” multi-part box, the kind designed to excite YouTube’s most prolific unboxing artists. We found the phone packed next to a tangle-proof, extra-thick USB cord—we like its bold, red design, but it’s too short for our liking—and a keychain-friendly poking tool for opening the SIM tray. OnePlus sells its wall plug separately.

The seven-band LTE modem and transceiver supports GSM carriers; in the States, that means AT&T and T-Mobile, so we inserted a pay-as-you-go T-Mobile micro-SIM card to take this phone on the go right after getting a feel for the hardware.



















As for the hardware, be warned: the word “phablet” absolutely applies. At 5.71 ounces, the phone feels appropriately hefty for something that measures 6.02 by 2.99 by 0.35 inches—for the record, that’s the tiniest bit taller and thicker than a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, but it's lighter by 0.22 ounces. The One’s 1080p screen measures 5.5 inches (401 PPI), which isn't far from the Galaxy Note 3’s 5.7-inch display. The screen is raised just above a silver-plastic edge and surrounded by a bezel on the left and right sides that’s about the same width as the Nexus 5’s—not as tight as the Galaxy S4, but not substantial.

The display uses an IPS display panel, which we found to be reasonably visible outdoors in direct sunlight. The screen is coated in Gorilla Glass 3, and its stretch to 5.5 inches hasn’t come with any apparent compromise in color reproduction or brightness. You won’t find a hard home button on the front or software buttons on the screen; instead, a set of old-era capacitive touch buttons—menu, home, and back, in that order—sit beneath the screen, and they’re decidedly dim when they light up.

Using a phone this big required getting into a habit we weren’t comfortable with: shuffling the phone up and down our palm in order to reach every part of the screen in normal use. My large hand is perfectly suited for one-handed use of the smaller Nexus 5, but trying to pick contacts, tap on-screen option sliders, type, hit send, then select an under-screen menu button proved impossible without shuffling my hand as if I was holding a playing card.

It’s a recipe for phone-dropping disaster, and the only remedy we found was disabling the capacitive buttons in favor of on-screen buttons a la the Nexus 5. It sucks to waste any of the giant screen real estate on buttons that the device already has, but it shrunk our usable area just enough to make single-handed use a viable option.

The phone’s volume and power buttons, on the left and right side, are placed a little lower than we would’ve liked, presumably because OnePlus expects users to hold the phone at its central point as opposed to its top. The case is rounded out with a handsome, textured plastic backing that stuck to our hands and felt very comfortable. We tried to scratch the back with table edges and fingernails, and it didn’t show any marks, which was nice.

Sam Machkovech



OnePlus has announced a range of replaceable “StyleSwap” back covers, including wooden and denim designs, but taking the default cover off is nigh impossible. We’ve seen other users do so by removing the SIM card and then yanking, but we couldn’t make it happen using our fingers. We’d need a prying tool of some sort to snap the default cover out of place.