The OnePlus One Review
Part Three: Camera
Part of the formula for creating a great smartphone is the camera. Dedicated point and shoot cameras have been almost completely replaced by our smartphones in our pockets. There are plenty of great phones that are marred by their unremarkable camera. OnePlus has touted the new 13.1 megapixel Sony Exmor sensor as the best sensor on the market. OnePlus has already shown that they are a company with lofty remarks in their marketing campaigns. But in the terms of actual camera performance, does the OnePlus One measure up? Or am I left with constantly disappointing shots unfit for Instagram filters.
Specs
As I've stated previously about the OnePlus One, from a hardware perspective, it is an absolute monster. The camera is absolutely no exception. Unlike other “high end budget” offerings(cough cough, Nexus, cough cough). The OnePlus One has impressive specs for both the rear facing and front facing camera.
Speed
One Second. One second is all it takes from swiping in from the lock screen to being able to take a photo. In terms of a smartphone camera, that’s great for the fleeting moment you are trying to capture. The phone has a fast shutter as well. In my normal light testing, the OnePlus One averaged roughly 1/17 to 1/25 of a second for shutter speed. The speed of the OnePlus One is impressive.
Focusing
One of the issues I have found to plague Android devices in the past is focusing. Both the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 were plagued with it. With the OnePlus One, focusing is no problem. It consistently obtains focus on the image you are trying to capture. With the live view feature, showing changes in the shot before you compose it, you can see how lighting changes as you tap to focus on other aspects. This comes in handy while you prepare to compose the shot you are trying to get.
Quality
Quality of shots can easily be argued as the most important part of a camera. It doesn't matter what sensor or software the camera has. If it’s incapable of producing quality shots, the camera is useless. The OnePlus One camera produces some of the highest quality shots of any phone camera I have ever seen. In well lit environments, the detail is incredibly high and colors are accurate. The depth of field is somewhat shallow, adding great perspective to portrait style shots The quality in the images of the OnePlus One are fantastic.
Pictured below, a zoomed in crop of the photo above to showcase detail
You can see the immense quality of the shots. I am incredibly impressed with the capability of this camera with the shots I have gotten so far.
Low Light
Low light performance is consistently a weak point of any phone camera. On the OnePlus One, the test shots show this device is no exception. The OnePlus One, in low light situations, is marred by high noise. In my test shot on Auto, the ISO was bumped to 4000 to keep the shutter speed down. This makes sense for a phone camera, but it was disappointing to see such a stellar camera fall short in this regard. The shots are passable, and the quality takes an expected dip in low light. Detail and color can indeed still be made out in these shots, at the cost of high noise. If you switch over to Smart Scene, the outcome unfortunately doesn’t change. Checking the EXIF data of each an Auto and Smart Scene image shows that ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed all remained identical.
Flash helps quite a bit in these situations, and is quite impressive for a phone. The flash fills the space without washing it out. The flash is also quite warm. Meaning that shots will look more natural.
Extra Features
The CyanogenMod Camera has added a few extra features to take advantage of the fantastic Sony Sensor. One of which being Long Exposure Mode. As a hobbyist photographer, I love long exposures; and was incredibly excited when I discovered that the OnePlus One’s camera had this feature. This is a feature that is normally left to DSLRs. With that in mind, I had pretty low hopes for it’s performance, because this is a smartphone camera, after all.
I was quite thoroughly impressed at how well it fared in capturing a light painting.
The camera software also features an HDR mode. But in my tests I have found it to be vastly different than the Google Camera’s HDR+ Mode. CyanogenMod’s camera blends the photos and seems to bump the gamma up quite drastically. Which makes for a very intense HDR look. While the Google Camera blends for a less drastic, more realistic HDR. Everyone has different preferences for pictures, my HDR style is much more akin to the Google Camera experience.
There are also other features such as a Macro focusing feature. Macro focus is exactly as it sounds, bringing the focus in for extreme close up shots. This feature worked well in my tests, even in moderate lighting.
There are various other shooting modes within the CyanogenMod Camera such as Snow, Night, Landscape, and Party. Other, more “artistic” ones include, Negative, Solarize, Posterize, Aqua, and Sketch. The camera app will update so you can see the effect taking place before you click the shutter. The ability to see the effect taking place before you take the shot has become indispensable in my daily photography with this phone.
Video
Another great feature of this camera is the ability to take Time Lapses, 4K and SloMo video.
With the rise of 4K and pushing as many pixels as possible. The ability to shoot 4K video is a welcomed addition to the OnePlus One. Though, 4K video is large, and the lack of MicroSD slot might cause issues for multiple long recordings looming on your device. While I do not have a 4K capable device to playback my 4K samples, 1080P shown below has some great quality to it.
For SloMo, the OnePlus One can do 120fps at 720p or 60fps at 1080p. SloMo works well here, which is shown in the sample video.
For Time Lapses, you set the interval timer to how often you want to take a shot. You can set it to as little as .5 seconds to 24 hours inbetween pictures. This offers a wide array of flexibility within this particular feature.
Ease of Use
For all of the features available for this camera, OnePlus has done a good job at making every setting change or feature tweak easily accessible and straightforward. That being said, this camera can be intimidating. With endless modes and settings, it can become overwhelming for those not well versed in photography. Most photographers probably won’t spring for their OnePlus One over a dedicated camera, but the amount of control given makes one wonder if that was the end goal. The immense amount of control given to the user is most assuredly daunting to a beginner photographer, or someone just looking to take a good Instagram shot. So, in this regard, if you aren't one to analyze before you shoot, stick to the Google Camera for it’s remarkable simplicity.
Front Facing Camera
The front facing camera on the OnePlus One is a 5 megapixel shooter. To put things into perspective, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus had a 5 megapixel rear facing camera. I’m not one for selfies, but in my testing, the front facing camera for the OnePlus one is absolutely stellar, offering fantastic quality. Below is a shot from the Front Facing camera on the OnePlus One. Sorry, no selfies.
CM Camera vs Google Camera
One of the most requested features of the OnePlus One camera review has been to compare the quality of shots from the CyanogenMod Camera to the Google Camera. Ask and you shall receive, below are a slew of side by side test shots.
Conclusion
As you can clearly see from the immense volume that has been written about this phone, clearly there is a lot to wrap your head around. The OnePlus One is a phone that excites the Android nerd in me. There’s blistering hardware that normally comes with a seven hundred dollar price tag. There’s CyanogenMod 11S, a fully featured rendtion of Android that satisfies even the most compulsive user in terms of customizability. Finally, there’s the fantastic camera, which allows for faux pro features and control leaving photographers drooling. This could be the absolute king of Android.
But there is one gigantic problem. They are impossible to get. As the resident tech nerd for my social circles, co-workers, and family. This phone is impossible to recommend, solely because it is impossible to buy. The OnePlus One could be the best phone money can buy, if you could actually buy it. Once this phone is readily available to all, I can easily see it becoming the favorite amongst off contract devices. With a solid build, great screen, CyanogenMod 11S, and a stellar camera, the OnePlus One is a phone that is unmatched in quality for the price.
