If you’re a brand that’s built a reputation on
creating high-spec smartphones for less money, what do you do next? Make
a phone that looks like a fusion between the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6.
Apparently you also dial down the spec list and up the design, making something that resembles the OnePlus X.
This
phone is all about the materials used, the aesthetic of the phone
taking centre stage to allow for some big changes in the way OnePlus
makes it handsets.
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The
handset comes in onyx glass and fired ceramic, tapered into the 5-inch
screen. That display is Full HD and OLED, which comes with a ‘duochrome’
mode that allows battery-saving notifications offered in black and
white when you pull your phone out of the bag.
But
when it comes to the spec list, don’t except to be overly excited.
Firstly, OnePlus appears to have found a box of old Snapdragon chipsets
from Qualcomm and decided to throw the 801 into the new phones. That’s
right, a CPU from 2013.
It’s backed
up with 3GB of RAM in fairness, but don’t expect the OnePlus X to win
any smarpthone speed races - just keep rolling your finger over the
lovely ceramic back.
Not all fur coat
There
are some decent parts though: this phone can handle a microSD card,
which sadly can’t be used as part of the internal storage as the OnePlus
X is based on Android 5.1, with OxygenOS the main overlay adding more
functionality to the mix.
This
includes a ‘Shelf’ that’s accessed from the home screen with a swipe to
let you see your favourite apps and widgets, and a slider on the side of
the phone to let you set the phone from normal sound mode to priority
only, all the way down to the classic ‘off, leave me alone phone fools’.
Bizarrely
OnePlus is making a huge deal of the fact it’s packed an FM radio into
the phone, pointing out how it won’t take data from your mobile plan or
Wi-Fi. Because that’s a major problem that needed fixing.
The
camera seems pretty powerful at 13MP on the rear with slow motion video
capture and a fairly strong ability to capture low light images with an
f/2.2 aperture, but it’s not going to be industry leading.
The
2525mAh battery should be good enough to last quite a while in this
phone though, with the OLED screen, low, low power processor and the
notifications optimiser - we’re looking forward to putting it through
its paces.
The OnePlus X release date
has been set for November 5 for the onyx edition and November 24 for
the ceramic version. The former comes in at a rather reasonable £199
while the latter will set you back a fair amount more at £269, with
invites needed to get your hands on both.
