OnePlus One review: When opportunity strikes

A large, 5.5" 1080p display

The OnePlus One comes with a Japan Display-made 5.5" screen of 1080 x 1920 resolution for a pixel density of 401ppi which is pleasingly sharp, even at this diagonal. QHD would've made a difference in web pages or optimized apps, but 1080p is fine.

The display is an LTPS unit, a low temperature polysilicone LCD, meaning it shouldn't heat up too much even with the brightness cranked up for long periods of time. The LCD is also an IPS unit, which should favor wider viewing angles. Finally, the screen is covered by Gorilla Glass 3 for extra protection.

The display

The OnePlus One's LCD has a standard RGB (red, green, blue) matrix with equally-sized sub-pixels of each color.

Looking at the numbers the OnePlus One's display is good but certainly far from the best. On the positive side, it's good really wide side viewing angles and it's also very bright at it maximum. But the contrast ratio is not really good as the black levels are pretty high.

When you crank the brightness all the way up, the OnePlus One outputs almost 600 nits, which is respectably bright.

Unfortunately, the blacks aren't very deep neither at 50% brightness, nor at 100% and that affects the effective contrast ratio negatively.

In layman's terms the display has only an okay contrast due to the poor blacks, which aren't very pronounced. Brightness is quite good though.

The next test reveals how the contrast of the screen does in outside conditions. This test is mainly dependent on the maximum brightness output and the reflectivity of the glass on top of the display. Here the OnePlus One gets a good result but again far from the best in this class.

Sunlight contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Apple iPhone 5
  3.997
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3
  3.997
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  3.549
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Nokia Lumia 925
  3.402
• Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4
  3.352
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung Galaxy S
  3.155
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  3.127
• Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom
  3.118
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.970
• Sony Xperia Z1
  2.950
• HTC One S
  2.901
• BlackBerry Q10
  2.856
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  2.801
• BlackBerry Z30
  2.790
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Sony Xperia ZR
  2.672
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• HTC One Max
  2.537
• Nokia Lumia 720
  2.512
• HTC One
  2.504
• Sony Xperia Z
  2.462
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2.422
• HTC One (M8)
  2.371
• Motorola RAZR i
  2.366
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2.307
• Oppo Find 7a
  2.279
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  2.262
• LG Nexus 5
  2.228
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Oppo Find 5
  2.088
• BlackBerry Z10
  2.051
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• HTC One mini
  2.003
• LG G2
  1.976
• OnePlus One
  1.961
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Sony Xperia Z2
  1.944
• Samsung Galaxy Camera
  1.938
• LG G Pro 2
  1.922
• HTC Butterfly
  1.873
• Huawei Ascend P6
  1.865
• LG G3
  1.820
• Sony Xperia V
  1.792
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• Meizu MX3
  1.754
• Sony Xperia T2 Ultra
  1.740
• Oppo Find 7
  1.691
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• BlackBerry Q5
  1.682
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.680
• LG Optimus GJ
  1.666
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 3
  1.622
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  1.578
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1.563
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1.552
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Samsung Galaxy Core LTE
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• Sony Xperia M
  1.473
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
  1.393
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• Samsung Galaxy Grand
  1.321
• HTC Desire C
  1.300
• Nokia Asha 501
  1.270
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• LG Optimus L9
  1.227
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1.203
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.180
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

Battery life test

With a 3,100Ah battery, the OnePlus One sounds well covered in the battery life department, but the real-world results fail to truly excel.

While it managed almost 20 hours of call time, close to 10 hours of browsing and 11 hours of video playback, the One was let down by its power management in stand-by as compared to other devices. Indeed, despite that shortcoming, the OnePlus One scored a respectable overall rating of 66 hours - the expected time between charges if you use the device for an hour each of calls, browsing and video playback a day.

That's by no means a bad result, meaning you can reasonably expect a full day or more of heavy use - after all, there's a big and quite bright display to consider.

Our proprietary score also includes a standby battery draw test, which is not featured in our battery test scorecard but is calculated in the total endurance rating. Our battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you want to learn more about it.

You can check out a detailed battery life test of the OnePlus One here.

Connectivity

The OnePlus One offers a great connectivity package out of the box with the only noteworthy exception being an IR blaster.

With quad-band GSM, penta-band HSPA and hexa-band LTE on its resume, the One is a true globetrotter. There's a full set of a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi standards on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot and DLNA sharing of media with supported devices like TVs and PCs.

NFC is supported and there's stereo Bluetooth 4.1, as well as microUSB 2.0 with On-the-go support.