Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9828/the-oneplus-2-review
The OnePlus 2 Review
by Brandon Chester on December 14, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- OnePlus
- OnePlus 2
In early 2014, there was a lot of excitement among Android enthusiasts for an upcoming smartphone called the OnePlus One. The company producing it was a Chinese manufacturer, and they were a new entrant to the smartphone space. OnePlus's marketing campaign was structured to generate excitement over the prospect of receiving similar specifications to a high end smartphone in a device that was priced substantially lower. Once the device launched, it was clear that OnePlus had delivered on that promise in many respects. The performance and display quality were superb for a $300-350 device, but parts of the software and the camera processing were somewhat lacking.
While the OnePlus One wasn't perfect, there really aren't any smartphones that are. For $300-350, it certainly offered users shopping on a budget a lot of power for their money. With many aspects of the phone already being executed well, one would expect that OnePlus's next phone would serve to iron out the issues and improve on some of the original's failings. That brings us to 2015, with the OnePlus 2 serving as the next flagship smartphone from OnePlus. In many ways it's similar to its predecessor, but with over a year between releases, and a change from CyanogenMod to OnePlus's Oxygen OS, there are certainly a number of changes as well. You can view a comparison of the OnePlus One and OnePlus 2 in the chart below.
| OnePlus One | OnePlus 2 | |
| SoC | Snapdragon 801 2.5 GHz Krait | Snapdragon 810 1.8 GHz A57/A53 |
| RAM | 3GB LPDDR3 | 3/4GB LPDDR4-1555 |
| NAND | 16/64GB NAND | 16/64GB NAND |
| Display | 5.5” 1080p IPS |
5.5” 1080p IPS |
| Network | 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 4 LTE) | 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 6/9 LTE) |
| Dimensions | 152.9 x 75.9 x 8.9mm, 162g | 151.8 x 74.9 x 9.85mm, 175g |
| Camera | 13MP Rear Facing (Sony IMX214) f/2.0, 1.1 micron 1/3.06" sensor | 13MP Rear Facing w/ OIS and laser AF, f/2.0, 1.3 micron 1/2.6" sensor |
| 5MP Front Facing | 5MP Front Facing | |
| Battery | 3200 mAh (12.16 Whr) | 3300 mAh (12.54 Whr) |
| OS | Android 4.4 w/ CM11S (At Launch) | Android 5.1 w/ OxygenOS (At Launch) |
| Connectivity | 1x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0 (WCN3680), USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, NFC |
802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.1, (QCA6164A) USB-C, GPS/GNSS |
| Fingerprint Sensor | N/A | Touch |
| SIM | 1x MicroSIM | DSDS NanoSIM |
| LTE Bands | Global: 1/3/4/7/17/38/40 | US: 1/2/4/5/7/8/12/17 EU: 1/3/5/7/8/20 |
| Launch Price | $299 (3GB/16GB) $349 (3GB/64GB) |
$329 (3GB/16GB) $389 (4GB/64GB) |
When looking at the specs of the OnePlus 2 one can definitely see a similarity between it and the OnePlus One. Both devices have 5.5" 1080p IPS displays, come with either 16 or 64GB of NAND, have a 13MP rear-facing camera with OIS, and ship with Qualcomm's latest SoC. In the case of the OnePlus 2, the SoC moves from Snapdragon 801 to 810, and with that we see a move to LPDDR4 DRAM along with an additional gigabyte of RAM in tow on the 64GB model. The battery capacity receives a slight bump as well, but this is also accompanied by an increase in mass and thickness. The camera sensor has been increased in size, from a 1/3.06" format to a 1/2.6" format. As for the other changes, there's improvement to both cellular and WiFi networking, the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner, and of course, a $30/40 increase in starting price for the 16/64GB models respectively.
Design
The OnePlus One had some unique design attributes that allowed it to stand out from the other devices on the market. Probably the most significant was the back cover, which sported a highly textured feel which one could describe as being like a very fine type of sandpaper. The OnePlus 2 retains many of these traits, but also adds to the design in other ways such as the use of metal for the frame around the device instead of plastic.
Starting with the back cover, you get the same sandpaper-like finish as the OnePlus One. The back cover is actually removable, but it's fit extremely well to the back of the device so you don't get highly visible seams. This means that it is a bit difficult to remove, and I had to slide a sim ejector between the one visible gap in order to start prying it off. While it is connected very tightly, the use of little plastic tabs to hold it on makes me a bit concerned about longevity if you remove the back cover too many times. The Galaxy Nexus used a similar mounting system and I recall seeing phones where one or two of the tabs had broken off which prevented it from attaching properly.
One you remove the back cover you'll see that you don't actually get a removable battery. This isn't any different from the OnePlus One, but I've never really understood the point of having a removable back that only serves to access the SIM tray, when you could just make the sim tray accessible from one of the edges of the device. Since the OnePlus 2 is a dual-SIM phone you also get an interesting little SIM tray which holds both SIM cards. I personally don't have much use for the dual-SIM feature, but I know there are certain (and major) markets where it's absolutely essential so it makes a great deal of sense for OnePlus to include it.
As for the appearance and feel of the back of the phone, I'm honestly not a huge fan. For me the textured back is interesting, but it's not really very pleasing to hold in the hand, and there's just something about how my palm rubs against it that gives me shivers. The little island for the camera, flash, and IR sensor also hasn't been designed with much thought. Considering the flash and IR sensor are almost the same size, I don't understand why OnePlus decided to put them in different orientations instead of making the entire arrangement symmetrical in its appearance. Something about the lack of edge space on the sides of the camera lens looks a bit off as well, although I find it difficult to articulate exactly why it seems that way.
On the bottom of the phone you'll find a set of drilled holes with a USB Type-C port sitting between them. I've said this in all of my other reviews of devices that use USB Type-C, but the transition has to happen eventually and while it's unfortunate that you won't be able to use existing Micro-B cables, it's worth it in the end.
Looking at the other sides of the phone one will see that the right side is home to the sleep/wake button and the volume rocker, while the left has a 3 stage mute switch. The three positions correspond to the three settings for Android notifications, and it's interesting that only OnePlus and Apple include a hardware switch to switch the mute status on their phones. The top of the phone is fairly featureless, aside from a 3.5mm audio jack.
Moving on to the front of the phone we find that it's dominated by the display, with minimal bezel on the top and bottom. Despite this, OnePlus has managed to implement capacitive buttons, a fingerprint scanner, and all without having to move the USB port such that it would be misaligned. The capacitive keys don't have any icons apart from an illuminated horizontal line, but by default they follow the same layout as the standard on screen keys that you'd find on other phones. On the top you have the earpiece and the front facing camera.
In the end, I think from a fit and finish standpoint the OnePlus 2 is actually a pretty good device. It does feel solid in the hand, there's no gaps or flex between the back cover and the rest of the phone due to how it attaches within the edges of the frame instead of onto them, and overall it just feels like a sturdy and substantial phone. As for the design, there are definitely some questionable choices that have been made such as the camera island on the back, and I am definitely not a fan of the back cover material. It's certainly unique though, and if you don't mind the back cover material you'll be getting a pretty solidly built device with the OnePlus 2.
System Performance
The OnePlus 2 uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 SoC. At this point we've seen Snapdragon 810 in a number of devices and have an idea of what to expect. That being said, we've seen that performance can vary based on the device it's implemented in due to cooling and other factors like the CPU governor. On top of that, in many situations a device's performance is heavily dependent on the quality of its software in addition to the processing power of its SoC. For those reasons it's important to run the OnePlus 2 through our standard suite of web and native benchmarks in order to gauge its performance relative to other Snapdragon 810 smartphones, and the rest of the smartphone market as a whole.
When I saw the web performance results from the OnePlus 2 I assumed there had been some sort of error, so I decided to completely reset the phone and run them again. Unfortunately, these results are not erroneous. You may have noticed that they bear a remarkable similarity to the results from the Moto G (2015). After looking at the CPU activity during web browsing I realized that this isn't really surprising, because the OnePlus 2 simply does not use any of its Cortex A57 cores during web browsing. This means that you're really getting a quad core Cortex A53 CPU, and with JavaScript being heavily bound by the performance of a single core it's no wonder that the results are close to those of the Moto G (2015) which uses a quad core 1.4GHz Cortex A53 CPU.
I don't really want to retread the Snapdragon 808 and 810 topic, but it's really worth noting that this is the worst implementation of the SoC I've seen to date. It's worth noting that this doesn't say anything about the length of time the A57 cores can run for when they do actually get used, but it shows that they're not getting used in circumstances where they should be: bursty workloads where the full performance of the CPU is needed for a short period of time to improve the user experience. It's especially concerning because OnePlus was making a great deal of noise about their work to manage thermals on Snapdragon 810. I personally don't think simply not using the big cores on an SoC constitutes properly managing its temperature, and the poor JavaScript performance truly does make browsing the web feel like using a slower and much less expensive phone like the Moto G.
Update:
There has been some concern online that these web browsing results may be inaccurate. The evidence to the contrary has been in the form of results from other reviews, results using other ROMs or kernels, or using other web browsers. To clarify, these scores were achieved using the latest version of Oxygen OS for the OnePlus 2, which is 2.1.2, in the latest version of Google Chrome. The reason for the scores is that OnePlus is specifically detecting whether or not Chrome is the active application, and if that is the case they unplug all of the Cortex A57 cores, regardless of the load being placed by both Chrome and background applications. Below I have embedded a video that demonstrates this behavior.
In this circumstance I launched a CPU load virus with 4 threads in order to cause Snapdragon 810's Cortex A57 cores to reach peak clocks. CPU4 through CPU7 represent the Cortex A57 cores, while CPU0 and CPU1 are two of the Cortex A53 cores, with the other two tracking at the same frequencies but not being shown on screen in order to accommodate my fingers. You can obviously see the clocks of the A57 cores dropping as heat becomes an issue, but that's not really the focus here. What is the focus is how all four cores shut off the moment Chrome is opened. This is clear evidence that OnePlus has hard coded this behavior. Whether or not it was introduced in more recent releases of Oxygen OS is hard to say, but given that users report achieving greater scores a few months ago this is very possible. It's also important to note that this behavior only affects Chrome, and results from the Chrome Dev or Chrome Beta channels are unaffected.
While the OnePlus Two is technically capable of faster browser performance, the performance users will actually see using the only browser included on the device is reflected accurately in the results we have published, and not at all accurately by any results other users are achieving with different kernels that modify the CPU behavior, or different releases of Chrome that aren't detected by OnePlus's software. With that in mind, I see no reason to alter the results that have been published, as they accurately characterize the JavaScript performance that most OnePlus Two users will experience.
BaseMark OS II is a case where the Cortex A57 cores on the OnePlus 2 actually see some use, which translates into higher relative scores than what was achieved in browser testing. Improved scores in the graphics and NAND memory tests help make the overall score significantly higher than the OnePlus One. It's worth noting that the use of the Cortex A57 cores means that the BaseMark results may not be exactly representative of how the phone will actually perform in general use. For example, in this case the Cortex A57 cores are in use during the web test, while in general they never get used at all during web browsing, and in more intensive situations the best case is that there are two A57 cores in use at some frequency and the other two are shut off.
In PCMark the OnePlus 2 again does better in the web tests due to the fact that the A57 cores actually switch on, but falls behind in the photo editing test and even more so in the writing test. The writing test is actually a fairly good indicator of CPU performance, because it involves decompressing text files, moving text from one file to another, adding text and images, and then saving them to disk. During that entire period the A57 cores are not triggered at all, which contributes to the low score. Even with that, it's not exactly clear to me what additional factors make the Snapdragon 808 and 810 devices all perform so poorly here compared to a device like the Moto G which just has 4 Cortex A53 cores. It could very well be the result of issues with ART, or other problems with frequency scaling on the A53 cluster. In any case, like all Snapdragon 808 and 810 devices, the OnePlus 2 struggles in the aspects of the test that heavily tax the CPU.
The issues with Snapdragon 808 and 810 have led to many issues with CPU performance this year across a number of Android phones. However, OnePlus is the only company I can remember publicly stating that they had worked to overcome these issues, and the fact that the OnePlus 2 falls so far behind other 808 and 810 devices in the web browsing puts a lot of doubt in the validity of those remarks. It's pretty safe to say that if you care about CPU performance you're much better off with the OnePlus One or OnePlus X, both of which use Snapdragon 801, and if you're thinking about buying the OnePlus 2 you really need to take the performance issues into consideration because they're on a different scale than those on other recent smartphones. At $400 there's a lot of competition, and the CPU and JavaScript performance on the OnePlus 2 just doesn't measure up.
GPU Performance
While general performance on the OnePlus 2 ends up being quite disappointing, when focusing on GPU performance we can hope for a much more appealing outcome as Adreno 430 continues to be one of the best GPUs you can get in a mobile device. While I don't expect there to be a large deviation from the performance of other Snapdragon 810 devices, given the unexpected difference with JavaScript and general CPU performance it's worth running the OnePlus 2 through our standard GPU benchmarks to confirm that everything is performing as expected. As always, we start off with 3DMark, followed by BaseMark X and GFXBench.
Snapdragon 810's Adreno 430 GPU is still very fast, and it achieves a very high score in 3DMark's graphics test. As usual, the physics test score basically just scales with frequency and number of cores in use, and with the big cores on the SoC throttling down we see a fairly low result there. I don't usually care much for the overall score, but since it's a weighted average we see the OnePlus 2 sitting near the Nexus 6, although in workloads that mainly stress the GPU you'll actually see a much larger gap between the two.
The OnePlus 2 performs very well in BaseMark X, tracking slightly behind the Mi Note Pro which we previously noted may have some level of additional optimizations at the driver level compared to the other Snapdragon 810 implementations. The improvement over the OnePlus One with its Adreno 330 GPU is quite large, with there being nearly a doubling in performance in the Hangar benchmark.
GFXBench's off screen performance results show that the OnePlus 2 is again a bit slower than the Mi Note Pro. In any case the performance is still very good and only really beaten by Samsung's Exynos 7420 devices, and the iPhone 6s. Since the display resolution is only 1080p you actually get better performance in games that run at native resolution than the Mi Note Pro and Galaxy Note5.
Adreno 430 has always been a good GPU, and in general the GPU performance of Snapdragon 808 and 810 hasn't really suffered in the same way the CPU performance has. At $400 the OnePlus 2 definitely gives you a lot of GPU power, and it's something that differentiates it from what's available at lower prices, and even other devices at the same price like the Nexus 5X.
NAND Performance
NAND performance is becoming a greater focus in mobile devices. To improve performance, vendors like Samsung and Apple have turned to solutions outside of the eMMC storage that is typically used in mobile devices. However, the vast majority of products still use eMMC NAND, and in some cases the performance of that NAND can be low enough to introduce noticeable performance issues when using a device. The OnePlus Two uses a Samsung CGND3R eMMC 5.0 NAND solution, which is the same as the one used in the Mi Note Pro.
Random read speeds track closely with the Mi Note Pro. Random writes end up being quite a bit slower, and this occurs even with repeated tests so I'm not sure exactly what's causing it.
As expected, sequential read and write speeds track almost exactly with the Mi Note Pro. While the results are nothing ground-breaking, they're in line with what you get from an eMMC 5.0 NAND solution. In most cases another component of the phone will likely end up limiting performance before one runs into issues due to NAND speeds, but you won't see some of the benefits that you get with extremely fast NAND such as extremely quick app installation times, faster media transfers, etc.
Battery Life
It's fairly self-evident that achieving a long battery life is one of the most important aspects of a mobile device. A device can be incredibly enjoyable to use, but if its battery doesn't last very long you won't be able to enjoy it for any considerable period of time. There are also many elements that contribute to battery life, and certain use cases may be bound by a certain aspect more than others. For example, web browsing is actually a very display-bound type of battery workload, while gaming is a GPU-bound workload.
To gain an understanding of the OnePlus 2's battery life in various scenarios I've run it through our standard battery benchmark suite, which consists of our web browsing battery test, PCMark's mixed usage battery test, BaseMark OS II's CPU bound test, and finally GFXBench's GPU-bound test. As always, all devices are calibrated to 200nits except when their brightness curves necessitate testing above that value.
In our WiFi web browsing test there's definitely a noticeable regression in battery life going from the OnePlus One to the OnePlus 2, but both devices last over 11 hours so I don't think this presents a major issue. Battery life on LTE sees a more significant drop than the OnePlus One did, but it's worth noting that it's difficult to keep this test entirely consistent between editors due to different network frequency and signal strength in different nations, and so it's just to give an idea of what to expect when browsing off of WiFi.
At first glance, the OnePlus 2 appears to do quite well in BaseMark OS II's battery test. When examining the behavior of the CPU during this test it's clear that the Cortex A57 cores shut off after about five minutes, and so you're left with four Cortex A53 cores. With that in mind, being able to run a CPU heavy workload for 4.28 hours is not that impressive when you have a 12.54Wh battery pushing four Cortex A53s.
It's worth comparing to the OnePlus One, which actually was a case of a device achieving both a high level of CPU utilization and high performance, and while it didn't last as long as the OnePlus 2 it's definitely more useful to sustain high CPU performance and achieve a shorter battery life than to sustain much lower performance for an hour and a half longer.
PCMark is a test that we actually weren't able to run on the OnePlus One due to the PCMark suite being a relatively new introduction to our benchmarking catalog. While this means we can't compare the OnePlus 2 directly to its predecessor, the fact that a device still needs to stand on its own means that this isn't necessarily a big deal. When looking at the OnePlus 2's battery lifetime of 7.27 hours it's clear that it has a notable lead over most other smartphones, although it's bested by the smaller Nexus 5X and the larger Galaxy Note5.
The fact that Adreno 430 is quite a good GPU coupled with a large battery allows the OnePlus 2 to perform very well in GFXBench's battery life test. When looking at sustained performance we see that after about 10 minutes it has dropped to around 32fps, and it sustains a very stable frame rate for the reminder of the test which speaks well of the thermal management going on. This is enough to put it at the top of the Android devices on our sustained performance chart, although it's still bested by Apple's latest and previous generation iPhones, which is partially due to the fact that the test renders on screen, although mostly due to A9's relative lack of GPU throttling. It lasts 3.52 hours before dying, which is one of the longer battery lifetimes that we've seen. One can safely say that the OnePlus 2 is a good phone for someone who wants to be able to run GPU heavy apps like games for a long period of time, although it's important to consider whether the CPU performance issues will end up bottlenecking performance in real world games.
While the OnePlus 2 is certainly not the most performant smartphone, one can say that the battery is more than enough to get you through the day. The performance and battery life demonstrated in GPU heavy workloads is notable, although the battery life in CPU heavy workloads is not very impressive once you consider how the phone is simply shutting off its Cortex A57 cores. If you need a balance between performance and battery life I would probably look elsewhere, but if battery life regardless of other factors is your priority when buying a device the OnePlus 2 will be a good fit.
Charge Time
One of the concerns that I've seen about the OnePlus 2 since its original announcement was the lack of support for Qualcomm's Quick Charge protocol. Since the OnePlus 2 has fairly substantial battery life, I don't think the lack of support for QC2.0 is a big problem, as you'll typically just be plugging the phone in at night. That being said, there aren't really any circumstances where quick charging makes the experience worse, and so the omission is a bit concerning.
Charge time on the OnePlus 2 increases slightly from the OnePlus One, which isn't surprising given the slight bump in battery capacity. The charger that OnePlus includes in the box is a 5V 2A block, and as I mentioned above there's no official support for faster rates using QC2.0 chargers. For me, a two hour charge time isn't very bothersome considering the large battery, but I know that some buyers will take issue with the lack of QC2.0 support. The phone's tagline is "Never Settle" after all, so I think it's a valid point of frustration.
WiFi Performance
The OnePlus One used Qualcomm's WCN3680, which provided 1x1 802.11ac connectivity and Bluetooth 4.0 support. while the OnePlus 2 adopts their QCA6164A WiFi + Bluetooth chip which also supports 1x1 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0, although the software stack now supports Bluetooth 4.1 for improved LTE coexistence among other improvements. As far as WiFi performance goes, we're looking at the same theoretical peak throughput for both phones.
While there is a small gap between the results for the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus One, I'm sure if I ran the test many times I could eventually reverse the order due to testing variance. I think it's safe to say that the WiFi on the OnePlus 2 is as performant as its predecessor, and while it's not a 2x2 802.11ac implementation I think that you'll run into NAND or network limitations before the throughput of the WiFi chipset becomes a limiting factor.
Display
At this point, it's hard to excuse shipping a smartphone without a great display. Not just great in terms of resolution, contrast, and brightness, but also great in terms of color accuracy. We've seen even inexpensive smartphones like the Moto G and the Lumia 640 achieve levels of color accuracy that weren't achieved even by many flagship smartphones only a few years ago. As for OnePlus, the OnePlus One was notable for bringing a very accurate and high resolution display to a low price point, and at the time it was one of the best displays you could get on a smartphone. With that being achieved by their very first smartphone, OnePlus has some big shoes to fill with its follow up.
To analyze the quality of a smartphone's display we run it through our custom display workflow which measures accuracy relative to the sRGB color space. Measurements are performed with an i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of contrast measurements which are done with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and organized using SpectraCal's CalMAN 5 software.
Out of the box, things look promising for the OnePlus 2. The display can get quite bright, and despite that it can also get quite dark, which leads to it achieving the best contrast ratio on record for an LCD device.
Unfortunately, there's not much good news beyond high brightness and deep blacks. Greyscale accuracy on the OnePlus 2 is extremely poor. Right out of the gate, there's a large imbalance between the red and blue components that make up the shades of grey, and that gap grows increasingly large as you move toward white. The gamma is also quite a disaster, with a high degree of irregularity. Honestly I don't really know what to say, as this result is quite shocking when one looks back at how accurate the OnePlus One was. The OnePlus 2 is simply too blue, and even without the blue shift the highly irregular gamma will cause issues with both greyscale and color mixture rendition.
Moving on to the saturation sweep test, the OnePlus 2 again performs poorly. Every primary and secondary color with the exception of blue has a high degree of error, particularly red, magenta, and cyan. While in this test the phone narrowly avoids being the worst result on the chart, it's not very far off, and can hardly be called accurate. There's clear saturation compression occurring, with OnePlus managing to be accurate for more of the 100% saturation values, but being undersaturated for most values below that.
With poor greyscale accuracy, irregular gamma, and inaccurate rendition of primary and secondary colors, there's no hope for accurate color mixtures on the OnePlus 2's display. There's really not much more to be said. We're not talking about the kind of inaccuracy that you'd get from an oversaturated panel, but instead just general inaccuracy where no color is quite how it should be. It seems like OnePlus just focused on making sure the panel matched the sRGB gamut and put no effort into any further calibration.
The display quality of the OnePlus 2 is not impressive at all. For a $400 phone this is simply unacceptable, and it's such an enormous regression from the OnePlus One. What's even more problematic is how OnePlus keeps tweaking the display settings with their updates, and you never know whether it's going to change for the better or for the worse. I've seen the gamma curve change significantly, but the overall accuracy didn't improve for the better because some aspects improved and others got worse. In any case, I don't know what happened when OnePlus was deciding upon the display attributes they would be targeting, but as far as being accurate to the Rec. 709 standard goes the OnePlus 2 is actually one of the worst devices on record, and I'm at a loss as to how to explain why they allowed it to fall so far behind the original.
Camera Architecture
When the OnePlus One was released one of its most notable features was its camera. At its price, being able to include Sony's IMX214 camera sensor was quite notable. This time around OnePlus is playing in a higher price bracket, and the stakes have been raised due to greater competition. With that being said, the camera is definitely one of the areas I see executed poorly on many non-flagship phones, either due to a poor camera sensor, or more frequently, a poor ISP and inadequate image processing.
| OnePlus One | OnePlus 2 | |
| Front Camera Resolution | 5MP | |
| Front Camera Sensor | Omnivision OV5648 (1/4", 1.4µm) |
|
| Front Camera Aperture | f/2.0 | f/2.0 |
| Rear Camera Resolution | 13MP | |
| Rear Camera Sensor | Sony IMX214 (1/3.06") |
Omnivision OV13860 (1/2.6") |
| Rear Camera Focal Length | 28mm eff | |
| Rear Camera Aperture | f/2.0 | |
The OnePlus 2 retains the OV5648 front-facing camera from the OnePlus One, along with the same lens arrangement. The rear camera now uses an OmniVision sensor as well, which is a departure from the Sony sensor used on the OnePlus One. While some may see this as a downgrade due to Sony's reputation as a great camera sensor manufacturer, I don't think there's any inherent downgrade in moving to an OmniVision sensor. On top of that, we're actually talking about an increase in sensor size from a 1/3.06" format to a 1/2.6" format, which represents a move from 1.12 to 1.3 micron pixels. These aren't as large as those found in a device like the Nexus 5X, but they're larger than the standard 1.12 micron pixels used in the sensors for most flagship smartphones. OnePlus's decision represents another OEM deciding to increase pixel size to improve sensitivity rather than increasing spatial resolution.
Still Image Testing
Due to some less than optimal weather in my area I'll be using the photo comparisons that Josh has taken for his reviews when evaluating the OnePlus 2. In a way this is good, as it means that the OnePlus One is available for comparison, which is a very relevant topic in this circumstance due to its issues with image processing. However, it does mean that the Nexus 5X isn't available in the comparison, which is an unfortunate but worthwhile compromise in this case.
To begin, I'll start with discussing the image quality when taking photos in the daylight with the OnePlus 2, followed by looking at how it fares during the night.
| Daytime Photography |
When taking photos during the day, the OnePlus 2 exhibits some improvements over its predecessor, but some regressions as well. The OnePlus One had some notorious processing issues, and one of the most prominent was how chroma noise would be plainly visible even in scenes with ample lighting. In this scene one can notice that the noise across the frame has been reduced dramatically. While this is good in a sense, OnePlus seems to have gone a bit overboard. Looking at the grass and the textures of the walkway one can see that the amount of detail is reduced compared to the OnePlus One. This is easily visible in the grass, where the heavy noise reduction has turned it into a featureless green smear.
As far as sharpness goes, the OnePlus 2 is definitely an improvement over the OnePlus One in the areas where noise reduction hasn't caused havoc. Examining the tree in the top left of the frame makes this quite apparent, with the OnePlus 2 maintaining the sharpness of the individual branches, and the OnePlus One producing a much fuzzier rendition.
Overall, if I had to choose between the OnePlus One and the OnePlus 2 as a day time camera, I would probably go with the OnePlus 2 simply due to the fact that the chroma noise in the photos taken with the OnePlus One is incredibly distracting. OnePlus definitely has room to improve their processing by toning down the noise reduction a bit in order to better preserve the detail of leafy foliage and grass. I think that phones like the Nexus 5X that offer better image quality at this price point, but they come with their own caveats as well such as having to use HDR+ mode on the Nexus 5X which greatly lengthens the capture time.
| Low Light Scene 2 |
In night time photography the OnePlus 2 makes further gains over its predecessor. When looking at the shot it's immediately obvious how much more detail is retained on the OnePlus 2, and there's none of the distracting chroma noise and smearing that exists in the OnePlus One's photo. When comparing the OnePlus 2 to other smartphones it becomes clear that it's not as good as the latest flagship devices like the Galaxy Note5 and the LG G4, but it still ends up being fairly good, and bests smartphones like the iPhone 6.
It's clear that OnePlus was aware of the problems with image processing on the OnePlus One, and the quality of photos taken with the OnePlus 2 is much better. They definitely have room to improve by toning down noise reduction which would allow them to preserve more fine details in foliage, but as it is now the camera still outputs fairly good images for a phone of this price.
Video Recording
The OnePlus 2 offers three modes for recording video. There's a 720p mode, a 1080p mode, and a UHD mode. I'll just be focusing on the latter two, as at this point almost no smartphones offer any additional benefits by recording in their 720p mode other than smaller file sizes in return for lower quality.
When recording UHD video, the OnePlus 2 puts up a notification letting you know that the capture time is limited to ten minutes. I'm glad that OnePlus, like most vendors, has thought to do this so you don't run into situations where your video stops recording without you even knowing like can happen with the new Nexus phones. As for the video itself, it's a 42Mbps 3840x2160 file recorded at 30fps, with a 96Kbps stereo audio stream. The video is encoded using the H.264 Baseline profile, which makes the OnePlus 2 another device in a trend of Android phones that use an H.264 profile that can't take advantage of space-saving features like B-frames and CABAC which would allow for smaller files or higher bitrates at the same file size.
The video is adequate from a pure visual quality perspective, but the visibly changing FOV and jerky motion caused by the use of OIS for stabilization is very difficult to overlook. It surprises me that almost every smartphone manufacturer continues to implement OIS video stabilization in such a simplistic manner, as it makes the video quite unpleasant to watch.
As for the 1080p video, it's a 20Mbps H.264 baseline stream with the same audio encoding as the UHD footage. Since you're not really gaining anything as far as stabilization goes due to the jerkiness of the footage when the OIS resets, I would stick to the UHD recording mode unless you need to record footage longer than 10 minutes in length, or if you want to save space. I suspect that most buyers will be purchasing the 64GB model of the OnePlus 2 where this won't pose a problem anyway.
Software: Oxygen OS
The OnePlus 2 ships with OnePlus's skin on Android. It's officially advertised as Oxygen OS, although I don't understand why it's branded like it's a separate operating system when it's actually one of the least intrusive Android skins that you'll see. Many of the additions center on customization, while the interface in general is pretty much unchanged apart from some tweaks to icons and the launcher.
During the setup you'll see that there are some additional screens that have been added which relate to setting up the fingerprint scanner and some additional inclusions like the option to use SwiftKey instead of the standard Google keyboard. On the topic of the fingerprint scanner, it seems to work fine. I find that it's not as quick as the latest Touch ID or Nexus Imprint, but it usually scans my finger correctly and you just have to touch the capacitive home button to wake up and unlock the phone. The set up process could use some work though. You need to touch your finger to the home button a great number of times, and there's no hints letting you know whether you're doing it correctly and if you're covering all the required parts of your fingerprint. I had to go through the process again and ensure that I scanned all the edges of my print, as initially I was having some issues with recognizing one side of my thumb.
Once you get into the core OS, you find something that's fairly reminiscent of Google's version of Android. OnePlus has obviously made some small visual tweaks and changed around some icons, but it's much more similar to a Motorola or a Nexus phone than a Samsung or LG phone. There are some tweaks that I simply don't understand though. For example, when swiping down the notification drawer from the right side of the display it will automatically go straight to the quick toggles. This is honestly just a hassle when you want to check your notifications. Swiping from the left side doesn't trigger this behavior, but the phone is so big that you will never find yourself swiping down from that position. This is the sort of thing that should really just be left alone, as it's altering behavior that is consistent and well defined on most other devices. Some may argue that this isn't an issue because OnePlus allows you to swipe down anywhere on the home screens to open the notification drawer, but that doesn't fix the issue when you're in the app drawer or inside of an application.
There are some nice additions that OnePlus has made to the OS. For example, you can make some changes to the icons in the quick toggle drawer, and you can enable or disable gestures like double tap to wake, or draw a V to toggle a flashlight. You can also choose to use software keys instead of the capacitive hardware buttons, which I personally wouldn't do but there's nothing wrong with having the option. An interesting addition is the ability to swap the order of the recent apps and back buttons, which is likely why OnePlus decided to not put any specific icons on those keys. That feature has actually really useful for me, as for some reason whenever I use capacitive buttons I immediately default to using them in that manner because that's how they're laid out on Samsung phones. There are additional customizations such as the behavior when long pressing the capacitive keys, but I haven't messed around with them very much.
A feature that's currently in beta which I've found to be quite interesting is OnePlus's Shelf feature. This is essentially a screen that takes the spot where Google Now would usually be, and it's a customizable area where you can pin widgets that you access frequently, along with some custom panes like frequent apps and frequent contacts. I actually don't use Google Now on my core Google account for privacy reasons, so I thought that this feature was kind of interesting. If you are a Google Now user I don't think it's as useful overall, and there's unfortunately no way to put Google Now there instead which is a shame. The feature is technically in beta so I don't want to be too critical of it, but one thing that continues to stand out is the seemingly hardcoded message at the top which wishes you a good morning, even when it's 11pm at night. I have had it show good evening once, but it was actually 8am at the time. I assume that's something that'll be worked out in a future update.
As for UI performance, I don't have much praise. What shocked me is that right out of the box I noticed that the OnePlus 2 felt really sluggish. Swipes weren't as responsive as many devices I've used recently, apps hesitated before opening, and there were noticeable frame drops. I remember remarking to Josh that the phone reminded me a lot of the Moto E and Moto G, in that it tends to feel like there's a longer touch delay and more load times than what we've come to expect from high end smartphones. After realizing that the phone is so hesitant to use its Cortex A57 cores, it's no longer a surprise that it feels like a Moto G, because both phones are doing almost everything on a quad core Cortex A53 cluster, with the OnePlus 2 just being 150MHz faster.
I admittedly never had much time with the OnePlus One to compare with CM11S, but as far as $400 devices go the OnePlus 2 doesn't offer acceptable performance even for basic UI navigation and web browsing. This is really the deal breaker for me. A phone like the Moto G offers similar UI and app performance for half the price, and at $400 you could go get a Nexus 5X or find a deal on a phone like the LG G4 or Galaxy S6, all of which offer far more responsive interfaces and just all around better performance. While these issues are due to the CPU management rather than the result of OnePlus's Android skin, they certainly impact how users will perceive the performance of the phone's software, and subsequently the performance of the device as a whole.
Final Words
After using the OnePlus 2 for quite some time and going over the results of my testing, I can't say I'm thrilled with how things turned out for OnePlus's second smartphone. There are a lot of really odd regressions from the original, and when that's accompanied by an increase in price it makes me wonder why someone wouldn't seek out a OnePlus One, or a smartphone from a different vendor entirely. There were definitely some improvements over the OnePlus One as well, some of which are due to the changes in software that have been made since that time. Before making any conclusions, I'd like to go over the major aspects of the OnePlus 2 and see how they hold up to both the OnePlus One, and the rest of the competition in the increasingly competitive smartphone space.
Unfortunately, the OnePlus 2's display was one of the first things I realized represented a regression from the OnePlus One. Right when I started using the phone it was clear that the color rendition was not in line with what I have seen on recent smartphones. Measurements of the display confirmed that it's far too blue, and not accurate beyond matching the primary colors of the sRGB gamut. The substantial changes to the display characteristics that often come with OTA updates never actually improve the display in any meaningful way, and the fact that the accuracy is such an enormous regression from the OnePlus One is just completely unacceptable.
Performance is another area where the OnePlus 2 is extremely disappointing. Snapdragon 810's issues are well documented at this point, but the OnePlus 2 ends up being the worst implementation that I've seen, with the Cortex A57 cores never being used at all in circumstances like web browsing or when navigating the UI. It makes the phone feel like a Moto E, which is something I remarked on before even realizing exactly what was wrong with the CPU's behavior. When considering the performance of the OnePlus 2, it's more accurate to think of it as buying a quad core Cortex A53 device than a 4x4 Cortex A57 + Cortex A53 device.
Thankfully, it's not all bad news. While the performance is certainly not what you'd expect from the advertised specs, the phone gets pretty great battery life as a result. The construction of the phone is also quite good, with very few visible seams due to the type of back cover attachment method OnePlus has used. I'm still not a fan of the back cover material, but I recognize that as a very subjective feeling and so I wouldn't consider that as an aspect that is necessarily positive or negative. As for the camera, OnePlus has put some significant effort into improving their image processing, and there's no longer any issue with chroma noise across the frame even in broad daylight. I think OnePlus still has room to improve in this regard, particularly where noise reduction is concerned, but in its current state the OnePlus 2 produces fairly good photos considering its price tag.
Unfortunately, even with a decent camera, good battery life, and a nice chassis, the OnePlus 2 simply has too many flaws that can't be overlooked. Like the original, the OnePlus 2's tagline is "Never Settle". Unfortunately, the OnePlus 2 does make you settle in many ways. You have to settle for not having Quick Charge 2.0 support, and you have to settle for not having NFC which locks you out of Android Pay. You have to settle for a very poorly calibrated display which pales in comparison to the original. Most disappointing of all is that you have to settle for poor performance, when moving through the UI, browsing the web, and doing anything remotely CPU intensive. You have to settle for a great number of concessions, many of which didn't exist on the OnePlus One, and none of which should exist at this price point.
At $389, you can find much better smartphones, such as the Nexus 5X, or you can search for sales on phones like the Galaxy S6 or LG G4 if you're in a region where the Nexus phones end up being much more expensive than Google's price in North America. Even the OnePlus One would offer a better overall experience. Regardless of what your needs are when buying a smartphone, I think there will be better options available to you than the OnePlus 2.
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