A Touch Of Glass

The Oneplus 5 was a stellar  smartphone for the price, and the mid-cycle OnePlus 5T refresh helped cement OnePlus’ position in the premium (above Rs 25,000) category, capturing nearly half of India's market share in the last quarter of 2017 and moving the brand from its spunky ‘flagship killer’ roots to a ‘genuine flagship at half the price’. Six months down, OnePlus has repeated the formula with the OnePlus 6, updating the flagship from inside out.

Sporting an all-new, all-glass design, the OnePlus 6 has used Gorilla Glass 5 and shaped it into a seamless curve around the rear. The result is downright stunning, and not only is it the most premium looking smartphone to come out of the company’s stables, but it punches well above its weight in the polish and ‘in-hand-feel’ departments. OnePlus has moved the needle on design with this one – what could, at best, be described as functional is now a guaranteed headturner. And the Marvel Limited Edition with its Avengers logo and gold accents is simply drool-worthy. That said, all that glass does bring with it a sense of fragility and the glossy back is a fingerprint magnet, at least on the Mirror Black variant. Wireless charging is still noticeably absent, as is IP-certified waterproofing – the OnePlus 6 gets water resistance, which means it should be fine in the rain, just not in the pool.

Turn it on, and the big change towards the front is the use of a display notch, which allows OnePlus 6 to sit rather well in the hand for a device that packs in a bright, punchy 6.28-inch display and yet be no larger than the outgoing 5T. Fortunately, one flick of notch display setting and you can have the notch disappear into the inky blackness of the AMOLED display. Coupled with the ability to remove the navigation bar and solely operate the device using iPhone-inspired gestures, the OnePlus 6 really maximises the visual real estate available. The gestures are fluid and refined, and in two weeks of use have never lagged or missed a beat. It helps that powering the One-Plus is the latest silicon from Qualcomm – the 6 is the first Snapdragon 845-powered device to launch in India. Paired with the Adreno 630 graphics and 6/8 GB memory 64/128GB storage variants (with a 256GB avatar reserved for the Avengers edition), there is very little that really stresses the hardware. Battery capacity remains unchanged at 3300mAh, but the Dash Charge proprietary charging tech is as snappy as ever. Over the years, Oxygen OS has matured into a refined platform, and while it visually still stays close to stock Android, there are a bunch of useful additions like Gaming mode, gesture shortcuts and a snappy face unlock mechanism.

One area where OnePlus has lagged behind premium flagships has been the cameras, and while on paper it uses a similar camera setup as the 5T, the new Sony sensor powering the primary shooter is larger and gets optical image stabilisation, which results in better detail in daytime shots and significantly improved low light performance. The camera setup handles close-ups and the portrait mode sees improvements as well, but it’s still buggy in tricky light conditions. Video recording now goes up to a buttery-smooth 60 frames per second (fps) at 4K, and a new super-slow-motion mode lets you shoot 480fps footage at 720p for one minute.

Despite some minor omissions, the OnePlus 6 is a well-crafted, insanely powerful device, and while it has gotten a wee bit pricier, it is still the best value for money in the premium segment…by a fair bit.