OnePlus just concluded its event in New York, where it finally launched the long-rumoured OnePlus 5 smartphone. The event lasted about 40 minutes, during which the company's co-founder Carl Pei did most of the talking and invited his colleagues Diego Heinz, senior designer, and Kyle Kiang, head of marketing, to discuss the mysteries of OnePlus 5's features. And of course, there was Emily Ratajkowski to briefly talk about the camera.
OnePlus 5 is riding heavily on the success of its dual camera, which seems to have some great potential given the careful choice of lenses, technology and the software. It was quite evident OnePlus 5's dual camera would be the highlight of the phone, but then Pei and his colleagues spent extra efforts to explain the other note-worthy specs of the phone.
The dual rear camera features Dual Camera Zoom technology that can zoom in 2x optically and allow magnification up to 8x digitally. There's image stabilization and noise-cancelling microphones to make your 4K videos even better.
But there was an interesting feature called the Smart Capture, which enhances photos, reduces noise and automatically sets the right exposure and colours for that perfect Instagram-worthy shot. The primary sensor has a 16MP lens with f/1.7 aperture, large enough to allow 34 percent more light as compared to its predecessor. The second lens is a 20MP telephoto sensor with f/1.6 aperture to add depth-of-field effect, yes like the iPhone 7 Plus.
Selfie lovers will find comfort in the 16MP front-facing snapper with f/2.0 aperture. We'll be sure to test the OnePlus 5 camera out to see if it truly stands out or at least matches up to rivals Samsung and Apple.
The overall design of the phone looks quite neat and its sleekness adds additional value. It is after all "the slimmest flagship smartphone," as Pei pointed out. There's also a 5.5-inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display, which is quite disappointing considering all other rivals have scaled up to 2K and 4K displays. But leaked specs of the phone had us prepared for this in advance.
There's a physical home button with fingerprint scanner, which can unlock in 0.2 seconds. We don't have any doubts there, as the previous phones have performed exceptionally well in this area.
Under the hood, the OnePlus 5 comes with Snapdragon 835, 6GB/8GB RAM, Adreno 540 GPU and offers 64GB/128GB storage options. It runs Android 7.1.1 based OxygenOS, which the company said includes new Reading Mode and comes with refined design language. Other features include app drawer, screen-off gestures, customizable notification vibrations, DND mode for gaming and Secure Box.
Powering this new device is a 3,300mAh battery, which is evidently 100mAh smaller than OnePlus 3T. There's Dash Charge to provide "a day's power in half an hour."
OnePlus 5 comes in two colours, Midnight Black, which is exclusive to the 8GB/128GB model and Slate Grey for the 6GB/64GB configuration. Pricing for the phone in the U.S. starts at $479 for the base variant and $539 for the high-end one. It will be available June 27 onwards, but upcoming pop-up events will let you get early hands on the device.
Let us know if you were impressed by the OnePlus 5, or you wanted something more from the company.
