An upgrade or downgrade or an extra side wheel – still confused?
After the huge success of OnePlus One last year with such a nominal price segment and promising specs, and OnePlus Two earlier this year, we were expecting for something more advancements in the devices by OnePlus being released. But with the lousy marketing tactics and invite system, OnePlus has disappointed its users again, not just in terms of devices being released by it but in terms of sales and purchases too.
OnePlus is renowned for its great builds, extreme specifications, different designs along with a price point which easily fits into people’s pocket. Last year after winning hearts of people, OnePlus put a stronghold into the smartphone business competing with major companies like Samsung, Sony, LG, etc. So, like every other company OnePlus released its two new devices this year – OnePlus Two & OnePlus X.
OnePlus X Introduction:
OnePlus X is a small phone being released for people who prefer smaller phones which are easily grabbed in hands with the similar specs as that of OnePlus one. OnePlus X comes with a AMOLED touchscreen of 5 inches, covering resolution of 1920 X 1080 with 441 pixels per inches which provides great viewing angles with much brighter colors as compared to the LCD capacitive touchscreen of last year’s OnePlus One.
OnePlus X Highlights:
- Android 5.1.1 Lollipop based Oxygen OS 2.1
- Hybrid Dual (nano + nano) SIM
- 5 inch Full HD AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
- 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution
- 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor
- 3GB of RAM
- Adreno 330 GPU
- 16GB internal storage memory, expandable up to 128GB using microSD card
- 13 Megapixel rear camera with LED Flash, ISOCELL 32M sensor, PDAF and f/2.2 aperture
- 1080p video recording,
- 8 Megapixel front-facing camera with OV8858 sensor, wide-angle lens and f/2.4 aperture
- 4G LTE, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS
- 2525mAh built-in battery
Design and Features:
OnePlus X has two variants – Onyx & Ceramic, Onyx being lighter in weighing 138 grams while Ceramic is 160 grams due to the use of original ceramic as material. Ceramic version is claimed by the company that it takes 25 days to be manufactured and undergoes a long fire baking and strong polishing process making it costlier than the Onyx edition. Back glass finish plates of both the editions provides a rich look to the phones as compared to their price tags.
The side frame being made in brushed metal enhances the beauty of the phone, making it fall into more luxury category than other phones by OnePlus. Due to a comfortable screen size, the button positions around the frame is quite accurate as per the needs of people. Alert slider being on left to change your sound profiles while power and volume buttons being on right side feels quite comfy to operate the phone.
OnePlus X comes with a dual nano sim which provides users to use two service providers at the same time. OnePlus X stores 16 gigs of inbuilt memory along with the advantage of expansion of storage via micro SD card upto 128 gigs. But when you going to use the memory card then you will be able to use single sim only as the nano sim slot will be occupied with the micro SD card. OnePlus X comes with a lithium polymer battery of 2525 mah which company claims to get you through whole day of use.
OnePlus X comes with the normal micro-USB port in comparison to the new USB type C ports which are quite common in latest smartphones. OnePlus X bottom shows two speaker grills but don’t get fooled by that, it is single speaker only inside just like the OnePlus One.
Display:
OnePlus X has 5 inches AMOLED display which is quite better as compared to the LCD display of OnePlus One or OnePlus Two. But comparing with the AMOLED displays of Samsung smartphones, OnePlus X colors seems washed out and dull, color reproduction is weak providing less blacked out display. But overall it features better display providing sharp image quality and color rendering.
Software:
OnePlus X runs android powered Oxygen OS which was developed by the OnePlus team itself for its devices. The user interface is purely stock android, no bloatware, no useless apps and comes with two skins light & dark to be used as per user’s choice. Oxygen OS is based on material design and is quite simple but interactive too at the same time. Oxygen OS was unstable in its early release but the new version 2 seems quite promising and strong as compared to the earlier one. Oxygen OS is improvising each day and will get more future stability updates.
Hardware & Performance:
OnePlus X includes the same processor last year’s flagship Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 combined with Adreno 330 GPU and 3 gigs of LPDDR3 RAM. SD 801 is still quite stable as compared to this year’s SD 810 which is embedded in today’s smartphones even in OnePlus 2. OnePlus X scored 40,335 on Antutu and 2,542 on Geekbench tests.
In 3D Mark : Icestorm, it scored 17,092. As we are already familiar how snappy OnePlus One was, similar to that OnePlus X also didn’t let us down, quick app switching, optimized RAM usage and smooth scrolling are major pros for OnePlus X. OnePlus X handles all the new games flawlessly whether it is Silver Bullet or The Walking Dead or any other.
Camera Quality:
Even with a smaller price tag, they didn’t compensate on Camera which generally other companies use to do. OnePlus X features a 13 MP Phase Detection (PDAF) camera which company claims to click an image in high detail in less than 0.2 seconds. Regular light pictures are great with natural colors, decent detailing and good quality. But the photographer need to struggle in the low light as the images turns blurry and captures a bit of noise. The clear image mode of OnePlus X captures 10 individual photos and then combine them to generate a super high resolution image. The front 8 MP camera did a decent job for the selfies filling enough light to make the pictures much brighter even in low light areas.
OnePlus X can record 1080p videos at 30 fps and 720p videos at 120 fps but the missing Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) flattens up the crispness in the videos.
Buy or Not to Buy OnePlus X:
OnePlus X is not for people who crave for big screen phones or phablets, this is small phone with everything a person needs. But the main advantage of buying this would be the benefit of AMOLED over LCD and a much exclusive designed phone. Rest all depends on user what he or she needs, it is a decent smartphone with great specs and amazing design.
Pros:
- Amazing Super bright AMOLED Display
- Stylish and Comfortable Design
- No Overheating
- Great Performance
- Affordable Price
- Good battery backup
Cons:
- Backlight Missing for Capacitive Keys
- No Dual Band WiFi and 802.11 ac Standard Support
- Feeble Loudspeaker
- Bad Camera quality in Low light
