OnePlus 3 review

OnePlus phones are spun out of viral marketing. Without all the social media posts and clickybaity claims, OnePlus would be nowhere.

As the result of a million bits of hyperbole compressed into a brick of phone, the OnePlus 3 should be rubbish. It should be annoying. It should be the ‘sponsored’ Facebook link you feel bad for clicking on. However, it’s not.

The OnePlus 3 is the best phone buy in the world right now, and deserves to be at the top of your list if you want a great smartphone, but can't quite afford those flagship prices. At £309, this phone deserves to cost Samsung and Apple at least a few million sales.

One of the biggest changes for the third-gen OnePlus flagship is confidence. The OnePlus 3 doesn’t try so hard to look different. The OnePlus One and OnePlus 2 attempted, and succeeded, to stand out with a ‘sandstone’ finish that feels akin to very soft sandpaper. Like a lobster shedding its old skin, the OnePlus 3 has a new look. And it’s fresh, but familiar.

The OnePlus 3's shell is made from anodised aluminium, looking a lot like the HTC 10 but perhaps even a bit simpler and more attractive. Shock horror, right? Previous OnePlus phones were never the most beautiful phones in the universe, but they didn’t need to be. The OnePlus 3 still doesn’t need that glam-factor at £309, but has it anyway.

OnePlus has provision in place for those sandstone lovers and people who think plain metal is boring. When you buy a OnePlus 3 online you can stock up on ultra-slim cases that alter the finish while only adding to the thickness a tiny bit. A sandstone cover will cost you £15.99, while various woods and carbon fibre-style ones are £20. This phone is a bargain, but OnePlus doesn’t half give you the chance to spend a bit more if you want to.

CUSTOM PAINT JOBS

This time around there are no choices about the basic spec, though. All OnePlus 3s have 64GB storage, which is loads. And, lest we never forget, four times the amount you'll get from an entry-level iPhone 6s. However, there’s no microSD slot.

In the past I’ve accused phone-makers of digging out card slots to make us want to buy a more expensive version with more memory. But here, well, there isn’t one. OnePlus’s Carl Pei says it’s because that kind of memory card use, where the storage gets sucked into main memory, doesn’t get you a good experience.

With 64GB to play with, I don’t care about the lack of microSD. But if you’re one of the five people hot-swapping 128GB microSD cards in your phone, think twice about the OnePlus 3. At least NFC has finally been added, though.

Some of the same people might be tempted to turn their nose up at the screen a bit too. The OnePlus 3 has a 1080p screen instead of an ultra-high density QHD one, but the perceptible difference isn’t vast and only the Vodafone Smart Platinum 7 offers a higher-res screen in a new phone at the price.

It uses an OLED panel as well, meaning contrast and black levels are fantastic. It’ll do the job as a late night bed-bound mini cinema. This is the first ‘flagship’ OnePlus phone to use an OLED too, after the OnePlus X adopted the tech last year.

Like that phone, colour reproduction is not exactly chilled out and natural, though. While not as overblown as the OnePlus X, colours still appear significantly lighter/brighter than they should be. Next to my calibrated MacBook screen and the Samsung Galaxy S7 (set to the most accurate Basic mode), the Google Chrome app looks different, the red bit almost flopping over into orange territory.

The OnePlus 3 has no way to change saturation levels either. You can change the temperature a bit, though, giving the phone a slight blue or orange tint. Besides, most high-end phones have slightly oversaturated colours these days. I don’t find this screen a huge change from the OnePlus 2 day-to-day, but unless you’re after a super-chilled screen, that’s no big issue.