The OnePlus One Review
by Joshua Ho on November 19, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Mobile
- OnePlus
Still Image Performance
Quibbles with the camera application aside, it's important to look at the results that the OnePlus One's camera is capable of putting out. While it was effectively impossible to properly frame the ISO chart for resolution testing, we can look at a broad range of other situations that can help to distinguish the OnePlus One's camera one way or another.
In this example, the OnePlus One really does a good job with handling fine detail and dynamic range. There's relatively little artifacting given the sheer amount of detail that has to be captured in this landscape shot, and there's very little blurring of detail. Unfortunately, we can already start to see some luminance and color noise, as seen on the building on the left side of the photo.
In the interest of documenting camera behavior with the various OTAs, I managed to take a few lightbox photos with the OnePlus One as well. In this scene, we can see that the pre-38R the camera has similar behavior, but with much more detail preserved when viewed at 100%. Unfortunately, this also comes with rather significant luminance noise despite strong lighting to keep the camera at a relatively low ISO.
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Unfortunately, the camera software is also lacking when it comes to HDR mode. A good HDR mode is almost required at this point as these smartphone cameras have so little dynamic range, and this is where the OnePlus One also falls short. Significant halos can be seen all around high-contrast areas. On the bright side, the output does have very high dynamic range, but it is glaringly obvious when used. This is especially odd as the IMX214 supports SME-HDR, which makes it possible to do HDR within a single photo instead of requiring multiple exposures that can cause these halos and ghosting effects.
On the other end of the spectrum, the OnePlus One is really a bit disappointing in low light. As one can see, before the 38R update there was effectively zero attempt at noise reduction in low light, and even when shrunk to 678 pixels wide it's pretty obvious that there is an immense amount of color noise. At 100%, there are even hot pixels present that make for an incredibly poor image. The slow shutter mode does make for some incredible quality, but this requires a tripod as exposure time can easily reach a second or more.
Thankfully, with recent updates OnePlus has added some level of noise reduction to the camera processing. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix much as pretty much any low contrast detail is smeared away and areas that don't have detail loss from noise reduction have significant amounts of noise. However, OnePlus is far from the only OEM that has these issues as the Galaxy S5 LTE-A actually has a bit less detail in this test scene despite the larger sensor size. The new updates have also made it extremely difficult to get a photo without significant blur from hand shake with RAW capture on, so this is an issue to consider as well.
On the bright side, with the flash on the OnePlus One does a respectable job. I don't see any real issues here, although the LEDs are a bit on the weak side compared to other devices that I've used this year. Overall, the camera of the OnePlus One is really just average at best. In daytime the camera is definitely quite good but there's already a lot of noise creeping into the photos before we consider low light photos. While the results are better than what we see with devices like the Galaxy S5, this comes at the cost of high amounts of shutter lag and motion blur.
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nspyraishn - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I would contend the "too big to use with one hand" issue is overblown. I have been using it for a while now and have no problem using it with one hand. MMV, but claiming "it's almost impossible to use it comfortably with one hand" is just plain not accurate, and reflects a strong bias by the reviewers against larger phones. I would contend that if you used the phone a bit longer, you would likely come to appreciate the larger "phablet" size, and find that particularly for its diE it's surprisingly comfortable to use due to innovative form factor design choices. Other than that, a solid review :)Socius - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
How does it feel to be the idiot who benchmarked this phone on the "balanced" performance profile? Lol. Change CPU to performance mode in settings for serious gaming or benchmarking and you'll see those results jump significantly.Also regarding your comment about cheating...you're being disingenuous. Cheaters clock the chips higher than stock, and temporarily increase thermal limits in order to get performance that wouldn't ordinarily happen. The "cheating" by switching to 2.5GHz is actually a feature in the phone for "per application performance profile." The phone comes with "balanced" mode preselected. But runs An tutu in performance mode, which is a fully selectable and sustainable mode as even your benchmarks showed little to no throttling happening.
Poor review, IMO.
HubbaMaBubba - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Holy shit, I didn't notice that. For everyday usage balanced is the best though, so it makes the most sense for the benchmark.Socius - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Actually for daily use I stick to power saver. Other phones benchmarked don't have the CPU profiler installed at stock. So for benchmarking, performance mode should be enabled. And even if you disagree with that, even though the other phones you're comparing to are running in performance mode all the time, you can't make the claim that this phone cheats on benchmarks by running in performance mode.And for the record...in performance mode, this phone dominates all other android devices.
mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Lol, funny =) hopefully he checked also it is not running max 1036mhz. It is a known faulty setting, and easily fixed by enabling developer options and check that cpu is running at it should and not locked to max 1036mhz. I actually had that issue, and in the performance mode it was still running at 1036mhz before i checked that setting.mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Hit the submit button accidentally. I was sarcastic about did he check the mhz before testing (his phone was running correctly), but if you feel your phone is slow, check your phone isnt set to max 1036mhz.Jc.ray - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I've been using it for a month. Besides some initial bugs to make it work properly which where solved in a couple of weeks I have no other complains. You might prefer to start using two hands for typing but many of us already where doing that with tiny iphone4, as for the rest I am able to manage everything in one hand which in my case is not particularly big. As for the phablet: yes, here is the measure, as much as I love it I haven't used my ipad mini not even once since I received oneplusone, you can just do everything here so, if any, biggest danger is how you scale your internet use for any porpoise with this devicejomo60 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
"First, the size is definitely too much to handle".The opo is 152.9mm x 75.9mm, the iphone 6+ is 158mm x78mm.
Your iphone 6+ review had no problem with a phone larger than the oneplus one, and rounded corners "feature" does not make a screen more reachable.
mrex - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
What else can you expect nowadays? Unfortunately I feel that you dont get objective reviews about apple anymore from anandtech. This is a good example.neogodless - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Re: terrible camerahttp://robinwong.blogspot.com/2014/09/oneplus-one-...
The hardware of the camera is actually pretty good. There's no getting around the lack of OIS, but otherwise it works well enough when pair with good software and capable hands.
I've had the phone for two weeks. I have little experience with Android and none with Cyanogenmod, but I was not confused about the optional... options that allow you to customize your phone, if you, you know, want to.
The battery charges quickly on my AC charger and the included USB charger, but it charges really slowly on several other micro-USB chargers that I got with Nokia and Motorola handsets over the past two years.
I did notice a little weirdness to the feel of the touch screen, but I put an amFilm screen protector on there, and have no issues now.
I use the phone about the same as I've used smaller phones, though I guess I was never much for one-handed operation. I like the stability of holding the phone and then using my other hand to do all the things.
I think the bottom line is that there's very little you give up in comparison to phones that cost $300 more. I don't think there's anything you can't live without.