OnePlus 6 review: Another great value phone, but is cutthroat pricing still enough?

Overview

OnePlus has a tried and proven formula: flagship features without the flagship price. It’s what OnePlus has been doing since the original OnePlus One came out four years ago. But is that still enough? The S$600-S$1000 tier price category is a lot more crowded these days, and the novelty of cutthroat pricing alone isn’t enough to make OnePlus phones a must buy. To keep ahead of the competition OnePlus needs to make a phone that actually stands out as something unique and exciting, not just one that does most of what the competition can do, but at a lower price.

But is that phone the OnePlus 6? Let’s find out.

Design - A luxurious new glass build

OnePlus has ditched its old unibody aluminum design and replaced it with a sleeker, more modern metal and glass build. You still have an aluminum frame on the sides for rigidity, but the entire back is curved glass that looks and feels fantastic. It looks quite similar to the Samsung Galaxy S9, but that’s honestly not a bad thing. 

At 155.7 x 75.4 x 7.75mm the OnePlus 6 is pretty much the same size as the 5T; it’s slightly thicker and wider, but not quite as tall, which is impressive considering the increase in screen size. However, at 177g it’s also heavier than the 5T, which weighed in at 163g. That’s still not too bad though, and puts the OnePlus 6 at around the same weight as the iPhone X (174g). This is definitely manageable.

My review model is the highly polished Mirror Black version, which looks absolutely gorgeous but is a real fingerprint magnet. If you prefer something a little more conservative, there’s also a Midnight Black matte-finish model. If you want something a bit flashier, there's also a Silk White color, which has a rose gold frame, and is apparently is made with powdered pearl dust, and if you want something a lot flashier, there's the newly released Red color.

OnePlus has made some refinements to other design elements too. The dual-SIM tray and alert slider have switched sides, with the SIM tray now on the left and the slider on the right, above the power button. This placement makes a lot more sense as the slider is easier to operate with your thumb. As with previous OnePlus phones, the slider lets you easily toggle between silent mode, loud mode, and vibration-only mode. The volume rocker remains on the left side below the SIM tray. 

Note that the dual-SIM tray can take two 4G nano-SIM cards, but unlike many dual-SIM trays, it does not double up as a micro-SD card slot. In fact, there is no expandable storage on the OnePlus 6, so you’re stuck with whatever internal storage capacity you buy.

On the rear, OnePlus has switched to an oblong fingerprint scanner, instead of the old circular one. The oblong scanner’s larger size gives you a bit more margin of error for placing your finger as it will unlock your phone anywhere along its sensor. The dual rear camera setup has also moved from the top left corner to the middle of the phone, and it now has a vertical orientation. 

There’s also a new “Designed by OnePlus” lettering at the bottom of the rear. I’m not a big fan of this, and whenever I see similar lettering, I just think the company is trying to imitate Apple (who actually removed its own “Designed by Apple in California” text for the iPhone X). When the first OnePlus phone was released, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, stated that he wanted to keep the phone simple, by not adding branding or logos to the front, or lettering on the back, so I was a little disappointed with this new addition.

One slightly confusing aspect of the OnePlus 6 is that it doesn’t have an official IP rating. According to OnePlus, the phone is equipped with “weather protection and can guard against rain” but they also warn that you shouldn’t “take it out for a swim”, which would make it roughly equivalent to IP4 or IP5. An iFixit teardown actually revealed that the phone’s innards are fairly well water protected with a number of sealing gaskets that should technically let it survive submersion in water, but even so, you probably shouldn’t risk it.

On the bottom of the phone, you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is always a pleasant addition, alongside a USB-C port, and a single downward firing speaker.

Display - Still only Full HD, but does that matter?

Jumping on board the notch bandwagon, the OnePlus 6 has a notched 6.28-inch Optic AMOLED display with a Full HD+ 2,280 x 1,080 pixels resolution (~402ppi) and 19:9 aspect ratio. While most of OnePlus’ more expensive rivals are now using QHD displays, the OnePlus 6 has stuck to a Full HD+ resolution, which helps keep costs down. I’m okay with this for now, as it also means a more power efficient display, but as screen sizes increase (the OnePlus 6 has the biggest display OnePlus has ever put on a phone) OnePlus may have to consider making the jump to QHD at some point (maybe for the inevitable OnePlus 6T?).

The notch is fairly small, and much shorter than the one found on the iPhone X. It contains the 16-megapixel front-facing camera, earpiece, ambient light sensor and an LED notification light. 

If you’re not a fan of notches, you can effectively disable it, which turns the screen on either side of it black to create one continuous bar. OnePlus’ Oxygen UI handles the notch quite well too, and native apps either blank it out completely or display information around the side of it. The notch won’t cut into the side of videos like the iPhone X either. One minor frustration is that the full battery percentage is hidden unless you pull down the notification shade (an issue I also have with the iPhone X).

The display itself is excellent, with bright colors and great contrast. Viewing angles are perfect and don’t suffer from any of the color shifting that’s ruined many OLED displays over the past year.

If you’re not satisfied with the default colors on the display, you can tweak the settings in the Screen calibration menu. I’ve become acclimatized to Apple’s True Tone display, so I find the OnePlus 6’s default setting a little on the cold side. The sRGB and DCI-P3 settings are both a little warmer and softer on the eyes, while still displaying a vivid range of colors. Alternatively, Adaptive mode will toggle between various settings depending on what you’re looking at.

As with past OnePlus phones, there's also an option for an always-on display, but it's off by default. Turning it on will display the time and date, as well as any notifications on your lock screen.

Audio - Loud but unimpressive

Audio from the OnePlus 6 is a little disappointing, and comes from a single downward firing speaker on the bottom of the phone. The speaker is actually quite loud, but its position means it’s easily covered and muffled if you’re holding the phone in landscape orientation. There’s not much bass to speak of and there’s some slight distortion at maximum volume levels.

UI - Clean and easy to use

The OnePlus 6 runs on OnePlus’ Oxygen OS, which is a lightly skinned version of Android 8.1 Oreo. It’s fairly close to stock, and looks very similar to what you would find on a Google Pixel phone. 

There are a few features that OnePlus has added that are worth pointing out.

First is a Face Unlock system that is similar to the Face Unlock we've seen on a few other Android phones. It's not as secure as Apple's Face ID, and it doesn't even need you to be looking at the phone to unlock it, but it is really fast and convenient.

Next, there's a new gesture control system that you can use to replace the standard onscreen Android buttons. 

Gesture control is off by default, so you’ll first have to turn it on by going to Settings -> Buttons -> Navigation bar & gestures and selecting Navigation gestures.

You’ll notice the onscreen buttons will disappear, which lets the screen fill out all the way to the bottom. You get three gestures to replace the onscreen buttons:-

• Swipe up from the bottom center of the display takes you to the home screen
• Swipe up from the bottom of either edge of the screen will go back one screen
• Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and then a pause with your finger still on the screen will access recent apps.

Unlike the iPhone X which changes orientation with you, if you have the OnePlus 6 in landscape mode, you still need to swipe in from the same edge.

The gestures work, but they’re all a bit too similar, and having to pause on the screen to access recent apps feels clunky. The gesture system also lacks some of the options you get from onscreen buttons, such as the ability to quickly launch the Google Assistant (long press the Home button), or quickly switch back to the last app you were using (double tap the recent apps button). 

The OnePlus 6 also sees the return of the Reading Mode, which we first saw on the OnePlus 5. This mode can be found under the Display menu and can be set to turn on automatically depending on what app you’re using. Turning the mode on shifts the display to a monochrome appearance that mimics an E-ink display, which makes it a little easier on the eyes.

Benchmark Performance

As with most of the latest flagship smartphones, the OnePlus 6 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with either 6GB or 8GB RAM. The 6GB RAM version comes with 64GB internal storage, while the 8GB RAM version has 128GB storage. Unfortunately, we only have the 6GB/64GB configuration available for review.

SunSpider Javascript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is in delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. 

The OnePlus 6 wasn't actually that impressive on this benchmark, and was slower than every phone other than the OnePlus 5. Having said that, in actual usage, it still feels snappy and responsive.

Basemark OS II

Basemark OS II is an all-in-one benchmarking tool that measures overall performance through a comprehensive suite of tests including system, internal and external memory, graphics, web browsing, and CPU consumption.

The OnePlus 6 was much better in this benchmark, and was the only phone able to match the iPhone X. I expect the 8GB version to surpass the iPhone's score. According to OnePlus, it does a lot of optimization at the software level to achieve faster performance, which explains how the OnePlus 6 is able to outperform other 845-powered smartphones.

3DMark Sling Shot

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. We're running this benchmark in Unlimited mode, which ignores screen resolutions.

In this benchmark, the OnePlus 6 was on par with the other 845-powered smartphones, easily beating the Samsung Galaxy S9 and iPhone X. Once again, I suspect the 8GB version of the OnePlus 6 would easily claim the top spot in this benchmark.

Imaging - The mystery of the OnePlus 6's secondary camera

At first glance, the OnePlus 6's dual rear camera setup appears to be identical to the one found on the OnePlus 5, with a 16-megapixel main camera paired with a 20-megapixel secondary camera. However, the main camera actually has larger pixels now at 1.22μm pixel size, and it also has optical image stabilization. The secondary camera also has a larger aperture, and now matches the main camera at f/1.7.

Here's the thing though: as far as I can tell, the only thing the secondary camera is used for is to capture depth information in Portrait Mode; it can't shoot on its own, and it doesn't seem to have any other purpose. OnePlus however, doesn't actually say this anywhere. If you recall, on the OnePlus 5, the secondary camera was a telephoto lens with 1.6x optical zoom. And on the OnePlus 5T, that telephoto lens was replaced with a "low-light camera" and all zooming was done through digital "lossless" zoom.

For the OnePlus 6, OnePlus has been very elusive about saying what exactly the secondary camera does, and the focal length of the secondary camera isn't listed anywhere. The only clue listed on OnePlus' website under the title "Dual Camera" is a cryptic message stating "capture in no time" which is hardly a clue at all. There is a big 2x zoom button on the camera app, but activating it clearly shows a reduction in image quality very similar to the OnePlus 5T, so at least some, if not all of the zoom is digital. So what does the secondary camera do?

Investigating further, I placed some tape over the secondary lens (it's the upper one) on the OnePlus 6 to see what would happen, and unsurprisingly, it didn't affect anything, regardless of whether I was shooting photos or videos, in both normal and low-light, and at any zoom levels. The only time shooting was affected was when I activated Portrait Mode, where I received a popup message saying "Lens is covered." When I removed the tape, it changed to "Depth effect". Based on this, this would seem to suggest that the only thing the secondary camera does is provide depth information to create the bokeh effect.

While this by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's worth noting that Google has proven with the Pixel 2 XL that good bokeh effects can be achieved through software alone, so a secondary camera just for depth information isn't really necessary. Even with the dedicated secondary camera for depth information, Portrait Mode on the OnePlus 6 isn't good, and it has some very noticeable edge detection issues. It also makes the camera setup feel like a step down from the OnePlus 5 and 5T, which both had more functionality attached to their secondary cameras.

Questionable dual camera setup aside, image quality from the OnePlus 6's main camera is actually quite good. Low-light performance is better than last year's OnePlus 5, and images are sharper with better detail retention. Colors and exposure are both generally accurate, but images tend to be slightly grainy and there is some noticeable over-processing.

Like a few other phones, the OnePlus 6 is now also capable of shooting in slow motion at 240fps in Full HD, or 480fps at HD resolution. Obviously this isn't as good as the super slow motion 960fps you get with the Samsung Galaxy S9 or Sony Xperia XZ2, but it's still a decent addition.

There's also a new video editor app that makes it easier to edit your videos on the go.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The OnePlus 6 has the same size 3,300mAh battery as its predecessor. Battery life was also quite similar, with the OnePlus 6 lasting ten hours and 52 minutes.

The OnePlus 6 isn't compatible with Qualcomm's QuickCharge technology, and instead uses OnePlus' own Dash Charge technology. Dash Charge is just as fast as QuickCharge (if not faster) and also has built in measures to protect from overheating. It will charge the phone from 0 to 60% in about 35 minutes, and from 60 to 100% takes another 45 minutes or so. The disadvantage to Dash Charge is that it requires both a proprietary Dash Charge wall plug and a proprietary Dash Charge USB-C cable.

Despite switching to a glass back, there's no support for wireless charging on the OnePlus 6.

Conclusion

The OnePlus 6 is a great phone with an attractive design, a gorgeous display, good battery life, fast performance, and a clean UI, but it doesn't do much to change what OnePlus has been doing for the past four years. And that also means that it comes with the usual drawbacks associated with OnePlus phones: the camera could be better, it doesn't have a proper IP rating, and there's nothing really exciting or unique about it.

While I'm glad that OnePlus hasn't resorted to gimmicky features like squeezable sides, or extra powerful vibration, I would like to see OnePlus at least try to break out of its comfort zone. OnePlus' sister companies Oppo and Vivo are attempting new things with the Oppo Find X (pop up camera) and Vivo x21 (in-display fingerprint scanner), now I want to see what OnePlus can do. There are just too many phones out there hovering around that S$600-1000 price bracket for OnePlus to keep pushing out the same formula every six months.

There's been a gradual upward trend in OnePlus' pricing too, with the 6GB/64GB OnePlus 6 now retailing for S$868, and the 8GB/128GB version going for S$998, without any real additions to justify those price increases. As a reminder, two years ago, the highest spec OnePlus 3 retailed for just S$649.

All things considered, the OnePlus 6 still offers good value for a smartphone based on a high-performance processing platform, but it's not as good a deal as it used to be. OnePlus has a lot of fans that I'm sure will be happy with this phone, but I wouldn't be surprised if their gaze starts wandering elsewhere, especially when the more interesting, equally powerful, and more feature-packed Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition finally makes its way to Singapore.

Note: This article was first published on July 20, 2018.