OnePlus X – Beauty on a Budget [Review]

OnePlus X is a mid-range premium phone from OnePlus. OnePlus X has similar hardware specification to its predecessor OnePlus One and with this device, OnePlus looks to compete for the mid-range market. Now let’s review the OnePlus X.

Beauty on a Budget

Design

Despite being a mid-range device, OnePlus X looks amazing and robust with its sleek glass design. OnePlus manages to keep it compact with a 5-inch AMOLED display on the front and dual glass on the back. There is also a premium edition of the phone with a ceramic build on the back, the default being the onyx edition with dual glass on the back. Volume rockers and power button are on the right-hand side and top of volume buttons is a dual sim hybrid tray that supports micro SD card. Also, it has an alert slider on the left-hand side that gives you 3 notifications levels in mute (mutes all notifications), priority (notifications from people you want from) and all (all notifications).

On the bottom, OnePlus returns with micro USB charging port and two speaker grills but unfortunately there is only one speaker. Capacitive keys are compressed underneath the screen which is very hard to get used to so on screen buttons are available too. On the top, it has an 8-megapixel front camera and proximity sensor. Finally, on the back, there’s a OnePlus logo on the center and 13 MP camera on the top corner.

Due to its small form factor, one-handed operation is easy and even with the dual glass design on the back, it’s a fingerprint magnet.

Display

OnePlus X brings 5-inch AMOLED Full HD (1920*1080) display and it’s good enough for viewing any media from texts to videos. But the screen has highlighted colors and may seem too contrasted in full brightness under normal lighting.

Performance

The OnePlus X boasts a year older processor Snapdragon 801 clocked at 2.3 GHz, 3GB RAM and Adreno 330 GPU. Snapdragon 801 manages to run daily task like browsing, social networking, playing music and video playback without any hitches but fails miserably when assigned heavy lifting with games. Games are very choppy, and lags are noticeable.

Hardware

The tradeoffs for the low price of the OnePlus X can be seen in hardware department as it lacks fingerprint sensor and NFC. Speaker is loud but skewed to high’s (trebles) therefore sound loses quality when it gets too loud. OnePlus X has an onboard 16GB of memory out of which the only 11.6GB is usable. Though dual sim tray is available and supports a micro SD (upto 128GB) for expandable storage to negate the smaller internal storage.

OnePlus X has a 2525 mAh battery which provides roughly 3 hours of screen on time. While 16 hours of talk time is good, roughly 7 hours of video playback and web browsing is below average. So given its price range, the battery is pretty much average. Also, it’s disappointing to see that quick charge is not available in the OnePlus X.

Camera

OnePlus X has Samsung’s ISOCELL 13MP shooter with f (2.2) aperture without OIS (optical image stabilization). Images are average under bright light but gets worse as the light gets low. Images may seem bright and vivid in the device itself as AMOLED screen boosts the color but if you view the captured images on your PC or laptops images look dull, overexposed and grainy. Night shots are average for its price tag as it uses lower shutter speed to compensate for the exposure. Videos can be captured in 1920*1080 resolution and as every mid-rage shooter, it lacks OIS so the videos can get very shaky.

Still the 8MP front camera is good but it’s nothing special.

Software

One of the good features is the availability of dark mode which helps the battery to last a bit longer. Also customizing accent colors (colors for menu fonts) gives the interface a different look. Oxygen OS has its own app permission settings which provides you the insight on what kind of information the 3^rd party applications are trying to access on your phone.

The Oxygen OS is one of the best Android OS as it provides stock Android feel with some more features like gestures and ambient lock screen (provides simple time and notification display with simple hand movement over proximity sensor when the phone is locked).

Verdict

OnePlus X is available in Nepal at Rs. 28,900/- which is much higher than the international price. Recently OnePlus X has been subject to a $50 discount and now costs $199 in the international market.

If you want a premium looking mid-range phone that handles basic task easily then OnePlus X is the right choice but if you consider yourself a mobile photographer and if you want to play games on high details you might want to look for other phones. Certainly OnePlus X is the best-looking phone in its price category but not the best performing one.