When it comes to smartphones, OnePlus makes little to no ding prior to its new release, but when it does release, the China-based smartphone maker makes sure it does make a ding in the hard-spec. Speaking of which, OnePlus does indeed has a new phone, the OnePlus 3, which from the get go, all we can say is, we are tempted. Very tempted. We drawn to it not only by the beautiful, curved space-grade aluminum alloy unibody that measures a mere 7.3mm thin and the almost non-existence bezel, but also the hard-spec and innovations it has to offer, such as Dash Charge, a turbo-charging of sort, that promised to provide 6 hours of battery life with just 30 minutes of charge. But that’s not the only thing Dash Charge has installed.
It is also promised to be cooler and safer, and most importantly, it is designed to keep the heat out of your device when charging – thanks to the relocation of the power management process from the phone to the Dash Charge adapter. In addition, OnePlus said it has implemented five custom safety measures to ensure the safety of the adaptor, cable and the phone itself. That’s a necessary assurance because, obviously, no one wish to have a device that risk bursting into flames.
The imaging department gets a bump too, now sporting a 16MP main camera that offers what OnePlus refer to as Smart Capture which includes functionalities like HD Mode, Auto HDR and Dynamic De-noise. It also uses a combination of Optical Image Stabilization and Electronic Image Stabilization to ensure image clarity. And then there’s the manual mode to satisfy mobile photography enthusiasts who demand DSLR-like capability and as for the 8MP front-facing camera, it gives you Smile Capture, where taking a selfie is just a smile away.
Fronting the device is a Corning Gorilla Glass 4-protected 5.5-inch FHD Optic AMOLED display, packing 401ppi and packed between that eye-popping display and the alluring all-metal body is a new quadcore ‘Kyro’ Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor (2x 2.2GHz + 2x 1.6GHz), backed by a whopping 6GB LPDDR4 memory, along with Adreno 530 to deal with heavy graphics lifting and 64GB UFS 2.0 storage.
Other details include USB 2.0 Type-C connector, dual nano-SIM slot, 4G LTE (Cat. 6), WiFi (no mention of dual-band, though), Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, GPS with GLONASS and BelDou, dual-mic setup with noise cancellation, Dirac HD Sound, plus the usual host of sensors.
For the first time, OnePlus’s new flagship killer is available for your taking at launch, which is today, without an invite for $399. If you need further convincing and would like the experience the new device yourself, you may want to consider hitting the pop stores, popping up in New York, London, Paris and Berlin on June 15.
