OnePlus X Review: Beauty worth buying?

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OnePlus X is a mid-range smartphone straight from the house of OnePlus. The phone is in much talks for its looks, so let’s unleash the beauty!

The packaging comes up with a OnePlus X smartphone, Quick start guide, User guide, SIM tray ejector, a tangle free Micro-USB cable, 2Amp Charger, and, in addition, a protective case. OnePlus chose not to use USB Type-C port like OnePlus 2 on this one for obvious reasons.

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Design & Build

The power button and volume rockers are on the right side accompanied by a tray for SIM cards. You’ll see 2 slots – fits either 2 Nano SIM cards or 1 Nano SIM and 1 MicroSD card which can be expanded up to 128GB.

The left side has the alert slider just like OnePlus 2, I found it to be a very useful, you can change ringer profiles with just a flick of a switch. The 3.5mm audio jack and secondary mic at the top whereas dual speaker grill and MicroUSB 2.0 port for charging at the bottom.

Above the 5-inch display is the 8MP front camera, earpiece, proximity sensor and LED notification light at the right corner. Below the screen is home for capacitive touch buttons, and those are literally invisible.

The company has used metal and glass all around. The phone features Gorilla Glass 3 protection at the front and fire baked scratch-resistant glass finish at the back, pretty premium but at the same time slippery too and it falls easily if you place on a bit curvy surface or lap too, and since chassis is made of aluminum it gets damage easily.

The Back is smudge free to some extent but you will find yourself wiping out the display quite often. You probably won’t see the fingerprints much on the white color variant of OnePlus X.

Speaking about the dimensions, its 6.9mm thick, makes it pretty sleek and perfect for one-handed operation.

As I said the phone is slippery but here comes the metal frame to give it a perfect grip. Weighs at 138g, phone feels pretty nice in hand.

Display: 5-inch 1080p AMOLED

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The 5-inch 1080p AMOLED display is well protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The viewing angles are pretty good.

The display has been one of the most battery hungry parts of any smartphone, and AMOLED displays are easier on your battery so is the case with OnePlus X. It has a dark mode that shows ‘true’ blacks because there is no back-lighting and helps in staying juiced up longer.

Color saturation is too sharp at times. Also, the performance was bit compromised when used under direct sunlight. Overall it is an excellent and vivid display to look at.

Hardware: Snapdragon 801, Adreno 330, 3GB RAM

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It is sad to see hardware front runs old Snapdragon 801, the same we saw in OnePlus One, I guess. But coupled with Adreno 330 backed up by 3GB of RAM, OnePlus X performs flawlessly and could handle plenty of app shuffling, gaming and browsing without skipping a beat throughout the time I used the device.

When graphic intensive games were played, it was able to give glitch free experience. However, the phone gets heat up a little after using for a while, but considering its entire glass build, issue can be ignored. Overall device runs fairly smooth and handles almost everything you throw at it.

It features 16gigs of internal storage out of that you get around 11 GB is available to use. The phone has an option for expansion up to 128GB. Seeing day to day usage option is pretty good.

Software: Android 5.1.1 Lollipop based OxygenOS

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OnePlus X runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box with its own custom OxygenOS UI. That is pretty much close to stock Android, though.

The UI is reasonably responsive and doesn’t feel sluggish. It is entirely free from bloatware except only a few noteworthy additions, SwiftKey Keyboard is one of them. Practically, I liked it more over Android’s default keyboard.

You get to choose accent colors which suites best with the background. Like in Android Marshmallow you can also customize app permission individually. There is no backlight on capacitive touch buttons; you may find them difficult to access especially in the dark. You get an option to switch their functionality, though.

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Also, you can enable on-screen navigation button to avoid such situation. However, I chose to stick with the physical buttons. Each button can perform different actions on long press and double tap. Literally make things faster. And like many others you get few gestures in OnePlus X too.

You can catch an overview of latest notification as enabling ambient display wakes up screen when you receive notification. You don’t have to press the power button to see the clock or notification, just hover your hand over the display and proximity sensor will wake up your phone automatically.

Shelf, that’s what OnePlus calls it, is a place where I can find my most frequently used apps and frequently accessed contacts. It can be disabled if you don’t need it.

Camera: 13MP Rear and 8MP Selfie

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OnePlus X has a 13MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture and no OIS. Consequently, it is tough to take out good shots in low light. Camera app is pretty clean and simple.

There are HDR mode, beauty mode, and clear image mode to take better images in different situations. HDR is capable of taking decent shots in tricky lighting conditions whereas using the clear image mode adds desired sharpness and clarity.

Using in daylight, it produced few great shots. Sharpness and details are just blended perfectly, but you’ll spot colors fading in few shots.

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Selfies were ok with an 8MP front shooter. Enabling beauty mode overcome blemishes and lets you capture great selfies. It can record 1080p videos as well, so 4K video recording is missing. Overall mediocre performance from the camera, not as expected.

Camera Samples

Audio & Connectivity

During calls, no issues were observed. Audio which came in through earpiece was loud and crisp. If you are expecting too much, you will be disappointed as when tested it could perform just above average. Now this is a mono speaker, so the only left side of the speaker grill produces sound. Speaker was failed terribly to generate crisp audio when played at full volume.

Regarding connectivity, phone features Bluetooth 4.0, LTE dual sim support, Wi-Fi, and microSD card expansion. Sensor front has Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity, and Ambient Light sensors.

Battery: 2525 mAh

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The phone comes with non-removable 2,525mAh LiPo battery. When used as my primary device, it lasted for 8-9 hours that includes checking social media feed, music, few calls and browsing.

The battery drain during games was a bit unnatural with a 20% drain in 20 minutes of continued gaming.

Seeing the properties of AMOLED display it try to manages battery but now very well optimized. Sadly it doesn’t support fast charging now this is a matter of disappointment.

OnePlus X Latest Price in India

Talking about the price, you can get it from Amazon at 16,999 INR and with Ceramic back at a bit higher price of 22,999 INR.

Pros

  • Good display
  • Great Software
  • Best Performance

Cons

  • Camera performance is not good
  • Poor battery life

The Verdict

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Summarizing, it looks delicate, feels premium and comfortable while holding and rocks in terms of performance.

I won’t say that it is a complete package of beauty along with specs as it misses quick charging NFC, 4K video recording, OIS in camera, to cut down the cost of course. Well, all these flaws make the device hard to recommend, but the phone is absolutely hard to resist for those whose priority is not 5.5’’ screen but elegant, and premium looks with the performance at the decent price. This is a super-budget smartphone with appealing design, sleek form factor, and specs.

OnePlus X Video Review