Review: OnePlus X

Intro

I was fortunate to receive a OnePlus X invite early, weeks before the US on sale date. Once November 19th hit, I decided to pull the trigger on a OnePlus X ($249) and a Sandstone Black case ($19). Immediately, I was worried I wasted my time and money. The review sites made it sound like the phone was excellent, but not meant for the use on AT&T or T-Mobile. Missing Band 12, meant that since I was on AT&T I would see less areas of LTE coverage, and mostly HSPA+ (4G) speeds. I even tried to cancel my order, but OnePlus processed my order quickly and it was already on the way. They did say I could just refuse delivery. Luckily, I didn’t refuse the delivery and I opened the box. With over 10-days of usage, I have tried to not only review the device but compare it to my most recent phone purchase: the LG Nexus 5X.

Hardware

The OnePlus X is one of the highest quality devices I have ever owned. IMO, it is a blend of the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 4. Glass front and back, with premium aluminum sides. The buttons are top notch, with the alert slider being a welcome addition. In the lowest position, it allows all notifications to come through. In the middle position, it places the phone in Priority Only mode. Users can control what that means via settings. Switched to the upmost position, the device goes silent. Nothing comes though. However, notifications will always be pushed to my Pebble Time Round and I can manually trigger Quiet Time on my watch whenever I want to never be disturbed. Although there is a single, bottom firing speaker, the metal design helps offer clear and loud output. It blows away the front facing speaker on the Nexus 5X and beats any iPhone I have heard. It lacks USB Type-C and any sort of fast charging, due to the use of an older Snapdragon 801. However, this is made up for by stellar battery life even while running Android 5.1.1 without Android 6’s new Doze feature. I could easy get 4-hours of screen on time (SOT) and then some. The Nexus 5X would do 2.5 SOT on average. The camera is a 13MP Sony ISOCELL without image stabilization and only a single tone flash. In good lighting, the camera is fine. In low lighting, the camera is mostly useless. The Nexus 5X’s camera kills it every time. If I hadn’t had a new Nexus to compare with, and was comparing it to the Moto X Pure ($399) or Moto G 2015 ($229), I would say the camera was better. But the Nexus 2015 lineup has some of the best cameras around. The addition of a dual-SIM tray is nice, especially as one slot can be filled with a MicroSD card.

The screen is 5-inches of AMOLED beauty. It is one of the best screens I have seen, and while being AMOLED it also tends to be more blue than yellow (Nexus 6P) which I personally prefer. The Nexus 5X’s screen looks pale and cheap in comparison, even though it matches resolutions with 1080p. The ability to use capacitive buttons versus on screen buttons actually gives the OnePlus X’s 5.0-inch screen more usable real estate than the Nexus 5X’s 5.2-inch screen which forces one to use on screen buttons. The capacitive buttons don’t light up, but are fully customizable. You can have a Samsung style or “normal” style layout, and each button can be assigned both long-press and double-tap functions. My back button when held would jump to the last app I was in. My app switch button would turn off the screen. The home button would launch the camera app. (You get the idea.) Double Tap to wake is present and works with any launcher. Other gestures can be used for camera, flash, dialer but I left those off. The experience of holding the device and interacting with it was way better than the Nexus 5X. The only wins for the 5X is having NFC and the Nexus Imprint fingerprint scanner. I didn’t really miss NFC, and entering a PIN is sort of standard fare.

When I was holding both side by side, I never wanted to put down the OnePlus X, especially with the grippy and cool looking Sandstone case. I never felt bad about putting the 5X away. OnePlus includes a factory applied screen protector and a gel case in the box. The Sandstone Black case gives the OnePlus X the same feel as the OnePlus One. I love the case and the way the phone looks and feels in it. For under $300 shipped with the optional case, the hardware and in hand feel is hard to beat.

Performance

First, I have had no issues using the device on an AT&T LTE plan. I actually saw the same or better performance (equal to or greater signal strength) with the OnePlus X than the Nexus 5X. Your mileage may vary, but in my area, lack of Band 12 support was a non-issue as of Fall 2015. Reviewers in other citites weren’t as impressed. The future could make things worse, as AT&T and T-Mobile deploy Band 12 & 17 and deprecate older LTE bands.

The Snapdragon 801 could easily go down as the best SoC Qualcomm has ever made, It has 4-cores clocked at 2.0GHz that are always active and ready to be used. There is no noticeable throttling of cores like with the Nexus 5X’s 6-core 808 SoC. Side by side the OnePlus X launches apps and multitasks noticeably faster than the Nexus 5X. When using the OnePlus X, I was blown away by the overall performance almost every time I used the device. Games take a few seconds longer to load and get settled, but run perfectly well once you start using them. I used the stock launcher (basically a dark themed Google Now Launcher) and the Google Keyboard. It is the fastest feeling smartphone experience I have ever had. The OS came loaded with dark themed wallpapers to match the dark theme OS option which paired perfectly with the AMOLED screen. You can customize the accent colors, notification bar, quick settings, gestures and display. It offers Moto X style Ambient Display features including the hand waving gesture so you never have to pick up the device to see what you missed. The LED light integrated in the front of the device is fully customizable as well. Again, everything is better on the OnePlus X than the Nexus 5X. OxygenOS is a perfect blend of stock Andorid with device specific customizations and tools with no bloatware. The device came with version 2.1.2.

However, that didn’t last long. OnePlus pushed a new 2.1.3 build out around Thanksgiving. I sideloaded it, instead of waiting for the OTA to push as it included an SD Card fix. My MicroSD card wasn’t being recognized with the out of the box build, and the new build resolved that problem. However, the performance of key apps suffered, especially with scrolling in apps like Chrome (I tried the Beta and Dev channel versions), Fenix/Falcon Pro 3, and worse of all: the Google Keyboard lagged badly. I was so bummed that my wonderful experience was ruined,

I went back to build 2.1.2. The best part was, my MicroSD card kept working! So I had the best of both worlds, and since the device is unlocked I didn’t have to lose any data. In early December a 2.1.3-x started rolling out as a hotfix. I was nervous, but since I knew it was easy to go back to 2.1.2, I took a chance. Luckily, 2.1.3-x is a perfect build (so far) and I have a fully visible and functioning MicroSD card and excellent performance in the OS and all my apps. I am disappointed OnePlus pushed out a “buggy” update dated 11/25/2015 but applaud them for the fact that they followed up with an update dated 11/30/2015 which resolved all the issues reported by their users. It appears OnePlus tests builds internally for a few days before beginning s staged OTA rollout.

Wrap Up

I highly recommend the OnePlus X to anyone who wants a 5-inch Android phone. You might get a few bugs here and there in software updates, but clearly the team is committed to resolving issues quickly. The OnePlus X Forums were very useful, and there are always places like XDA and our Slack channel to visit. Most users would not notice the lag I experienced, and even more wouldn’t know about sideloading OTAs and ever vissit the forums. Luckily the OnePlus X is affordable enough to be purchased by just about anyone looking for an unlocked, no-contract phone. This weekend you can buy one without an invite. I highly recommend you do. Know someone with an iPhone 6/6S? You can get them the awesome Sandstone Black case I am using, and score a free invite for them or keep it for yourself in case you need to save up to take the plunge later. The hardware is stellar, the software performs faster than any Android phone I have ever used. If you want a good phone and a high price, get a Nexus 5X. It you want a great phone at an affordable price, get a OnePlus X.